Caleb swings the gas can to fend them off. Gas splashes on them.
The can thuds hollowly on a possessed girl"s head, and it"s too late.
The lighter falls from his hand. A hundred hands grab him with impossible strength. He cries out as some of the fingers puncture his skin, worming into his muscle. He feels teeth bite deep into the flesh of his side and hears the sound as they tear a small piece away. His own scream is piercing in his ears.
And so is the clap and echo of the gunshot. He looks up and sees Christine"s face over the railing above him, illuminated by the spark of fire from the barrel.
Then he feels the heat all around him, and knows the gas is going up. Firelight flashes across the walls. There"s a collective shriek, and the hands that were tearing into his flesh fall away. Caleb tumbles down the stairwell into the flames, into a tangle of thrashing limbs.
He smells his own hair burning, hears his screams mingle with those of the sleepwalkers.
In the next instant he"s scrambling upward, out of the conflagration. He reaches the next landing, rolling, burning, rubbing his body feverishly, then looks down at himself, expecting to see his body wrapped in flames. Instead, his clothes are steaming, but he"s fine. Then he realizes: his wet clothes, soaked by the rain, saved him.
But the sleepwalkers are burning alive.
Two of them break through the flames, flailing and hissing. Caleb yanks the hatchet out of his belt and swings only twice. Each of them drops with a hollow thud and keeps burning.
The rest of them are already burned black.
The smell of them makes Caleb puke as he runs. Vomit comes out of his nose and burns and makes him puke more, but still he runs, onward, upward.
The fire follows him, moving fast, almost burning his heels.
"Come on!" he hears Christine"s voice echo from the landing above. "The door up here is unlocked!"
He runs hard, the fire licking his feet. He"s already slick with sweat from the heat.
The way the fire is spreading the whole place will burn.
"Come on!"
Caleb rounds the corner and sees Christine at the top of the next flight of stairs, looking beautiful in the firelight.
Funny how things come around.
Funny how just when you"ve grown up and you think you"re finally safe from your nightmares, you realize they were real after all.
There"s Christine on the landing only a few feet away. Behind her, a door.
Caleb sees this all very clearly.
He sees it even before it happens, because he"s seen it a thousand times before. It"s more than deja vu.
The door behind Christine opens, reveals a rectangle of black.
And before Caleb"s foot hits the next step, Christine is jerked back into the dark.
Gone.
"CHRISTINE!" On the landing now, he slams himself against the door.
Locked.
"CHRISTINE!" He hits the steel door with the hatchet again and again and again and again and again.
Behind it the faintest scream fades into silence.
Caleb doesn"t stop pounding on the door, doesn"t stop until the flames are all around him and he can smell himself burning again.
The door won"t budge. He looks up. Only two more floors until the top. If both of these doors are locked then that"s the end of him.
On the steps, just out of the blaze, he sees Christine"s radio.
Must"ve fallen there.
He s.n.a.t.c.hes it up and runs, coughing now, blinded by smoke and tears, dizzy. Tries the next door. Locked. One more flight to go.
The smoke is so thick he sees nothing. He knows where he is only by the feel of his hand on the railing. He reaches the landing, gropes and finds the door. The heat is almost unbearable now. He reels and almost falls, almost blacks out, but fights his way out of it. He finds the doork.n.o.b.
And it turns. He steps into the coolness and slams the door on the swirling flames behind him.
In the blackness, there is no sound but the ticking of clocks.
Caleb steps into the room, blind.
The only light is a bar of orange coming from beneath the closed door at his back.
He steps forward, gripping the hatchet tightly.
The sound of ticking is all around him, maddening as the buzzing of a million mosquitoes. He reaches out, groping in oblivion.
"I don"t need to see you," says a deep voice. "They will tell me where you are."
Caleb jerks his head in the direction of the sound, but echoes jumble his perception, and he just winds up spinning around, lost.
There"s laughter. He knows it"s the voice of the director, Morle, but in the shadows he can almost hear hundreds of other voices laughing too.
"I could snap your neck at any moment. This is what surrender feels like."
"I"m not scared of you," Caleb lies.
There"s no answer, not even the laughter Caleb expected. Then there"s the sound of something whipping through the air, and the hatchet disappears, yanked from his hand.
The la.s.so.
"Now do you believe me?" says the voice.
Caleb tries to catch his breath. His mind is racing. "What do you want from me?"
"Nothing you won"t give freely."
"I won"t help you make the world end."
"That"s exactly what you"ve come here to do."
He can"t tell if he"s imagining it or not, but the ticking seems to speed up. The heat is maddening. Sweat runs into his eyes.
Then he gets an idea. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the little radio. He puts on the headphones. At first only white noise greets his ears.
Please, Anna. Come on. Be there.
The only sound is the rush of nothing and the ticking of the clocks.
"You should be enjoying these moments. The spirits of a million dead are chanting your name, do you hear it?" the voice says. It seems to be coming from everywhere at once. "For decades, witches, sorcerers, Satanists, a few enlightened Druids, have all ached for this moment."
Caleb"s throat is so dry he can barely croak a reply. "Why?"
He can hear the fire crackling behind the door now, hear the door bowing in its frame from the heat.
"Because the followers of Lucifer have no place in heaven. But once they"ve awakened their master, they"ll be able to create their own place here, on earth."
"What about the rest of us?"
"Those who survive will be enslaved. The rest will simply be gone."
"And you expect me to help you?"
"Aren"t you listening? You already are. We couldn"t do it without you, Billy."
Caleb is lost in the dark. He simply keeps spinning around, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice.
Come on, Anna, talk to me! Help me save your sister!
Only static answers his plea.
"Where"s Christine?" Caleb barks.
"You will be reunited soon, rest a.s.sured."
"And what do you get? What"s your reward for all this? You get to be the devil"s right-hand man, or what?"
"No, no. Not me. I never wanted such glory. I don"t even know if I believe in the devil, frankly. All I"m telling you is what the spirits told me. When the end comes, I"ll finally get to sleep. They"ve promised me. The end of the world, to me, is rest. Escape. But first, I must finish my work. And we must hurry, tick, tick, tick."
The ticking has grown now, not only in speed, but in volume. Caleb grits his teeth against the onslaught of noise. He turns the static in the headphones up to drown it out. And in the sea of rushing silence he hears a tiny child"s voice.
it says Caleb turns and faces the darkness to his left. Now he can feel the presence there, almost smell the stale breath."Well, what if I don"t help? What if I run back through that door and burn myself alive?"
"You can"t," says the voice.
"Wanna bet?" says Caleb, and he"s sprinting for the bar of orange he knows is the door. He grabs the handle but recoils instantly. The k.n.o.b is scalding.
says Anna.Caleb drops to his knees and hears the la.s.so whip above his head. If his neck were caught in that loop, he"s sure the director could snap it easily.
Caleb does as Anna instructs, and two lamps on the far side of the room spring to life. But the director is already gone, the door on the far wall swinging shut behind him. Caleb runs toward it. Hundreds of clocks line the room. He knocks a few down as he barrels through, just for spite. On the floor in the corner of the room, he sees it. He s.n.a.t.c.hes it up and shoves through the door. The next room or hallway-Caleb can"t tell which-is utterly without light. He enters tentatively. He does as he"s instructed, running carefully yet clumsily at first, then at an all-out sprint.< p="">
There"s a turn, right, now. good, now run; the hallway is empty, run!> For all Caleb can tell, he could be running in outer s.p.a.ce. The feeling of sprinting through darkness is the feeling of immortality.
He does, and the la.s.so whips over his head again, closer this time. And Caleb does.Through the hiss of static, Caleb can barely hear Johnny Morle"s footfalls as he runs through the darkness ahead.
Finally, after traversing a complex series of blind turns and going through several sets of doors, Anna tells him to stop at one last heavy door. He heaves it open.
When he steps through, he"s surprised to feel rain on his face.
He looks up. High above him rain pours through a broken-out skylight. Leading up to it, a ladder.
says Anna."Up there? He could just push the ladder down," he says aloud.
So Caleb tucks the hatchet in his belt and goes.The rungs are slippery, and more than once his foot slips and he almost falls. Finally, tentatively, he peeks out and scans the rooftop, trying to see through the rainy darkness.
Somehow, Caleb knows she means he"s behind a large, greenhouse-like structure almost a hundred yards away.He climbs up and steps onto the gravel of the roof.
He pulls out the hatchet as he strides toward the greenhouse.
"This isn"t what he wanted, is it? I"m not helping him, am I?"
Caleb walks faster now. There is a strength, a purpose in his step he"s never known before.He breaks into a jog, then a run.