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-muffled 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.
6
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 pricked 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 snatch 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 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 would happen 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.
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 sturdy 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 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 phosphorescent 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 passed.
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 circumstances? Not far. Not very damned fast. They needed to find transportation within the next fe
w 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 spunk.
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.”
“I wasn’t thinking of these cars,” Jack said. “But if we can find a pay phone, put in a call to headquarters, we could have them send out a department car for us.”
“Isn’t that a phone over there?” Penny asked, pointing across the broad avenue.
“Snow’s so thick, I can’t be sure,” Jack said, squinting at the object that had drawn Penny’s attention. “It might be a phone.”
“Let’s go have a look,” Rebecca said.
Even as she spoke, a small but sharply clawed hand came out of the grating, from the space between two of the steel bars.
Davey saw it first, cried out, stumbled back, away from the rising steam.
A goblin’s hand.
And another one, scrabbling at the toe of Rebecca’s boot. She stomped on it, saw shining silver-white eyes in the darkness under the grate, and jumped back.
A third hand appeared, and a fourth, and Penny and Jack got out of the way, and suddenly the entire steel grating rattled in its circular niche, tilted up at one end, slammed back into place, but immediately tilted up again, a little farther than an inch this time, but fell back, rattled, bounced. The horde below was trying to push out of the tunnel.
Although the grating was large and immensely heavy, Rebecca was sure the creatures below would dislodge it and come boiling out of the darkness and steam. Jack must have been equally convinced, for he snatched up Davey and ran. Rebecca grabbed Penny’s hand, and they followed Jack, fleeing down the blizzard-pounded avenue, not moving as fast as they should, not moving very fast at all. None of them dared to look back.
Ahead, on the far side of the divided thoroughfare, a Jeep station wagon turned the corner, tires churning effortlessly through the snow. It bore the insignia of the city department of streets.
Jack and Rebecca and the kids were headed downtown, but the Jeep was headed uptown. Jack angled across the avenue, toward the center divider and the other lanes beyond it, trying to get in front of the Jeep and cut it off before it was past them.
Rebecca and Penny followed.
If the driver of the Jeep saw them, he didn’t give any indication of it. He didn’t slow down.
Rebecca was waving frantically as she ran, and Penny was shouting, and Rebecca started shouting, too, and so did Jack, all of them shouting their fool heads off because the Jeep was their only hope of escape.
7
At the table in the brightly lighted kitchen above Rada, Carver Hampton played a few hands of solitaire. He hoped the game would take his mind off the evil that was loose in the winter night, and he hoped it would help him overcome his feelings of guilt and shame, which plagued him because he hadn’t done anything to stop that evil from having its way in the world. But the cards couldn’t distract him. He kept looking out the window beside the table, sensing something unspeakable out there in the dark. His guilt grew stronger instead of weaker; it chewed on his conscience.
He was a Houngon.
He had certain responsibilities.
He could not condone such monstrous evil as this.
Damn.
He tried watching television. Quincy. Jack Klugman was shouting at his stupid superiors, crusading for Justice, exhibiting a sense of social compassion greater than Mother Teresa’s, and otherwise comporting himself more like Superman than like a real medical examiner. On Dynasty, a bunch of rich people were carrying on in the most licentious, vicious, Machiavellian manner, and Carver asked himself the same question he always asked himself when he was unfortunate enough to catch a few minutes of Dynasty or Dallas or one of their clones: If real rich people in the real world were this obsessed with sex, revenge, back-stabbing, and petty jealousies, how could any of them ever have had the time and intelligence to make any money in the first place? He switched off the TV.
He was a Houngon.
He had certain responsibilities.
He chose a book from the living room shelf, the new Elmore Leonard novel, and although he was a big fan of Leonard’s, and although no one wrote stories that moved faster than Leonard’s stories, he couldn’t concentrate on this one. He read two pages, couldn’t remember a thing he’d read, and returned the book to the shelf.
He was a Houngon.
He returned to the kitchen, went to the telephone. He hesitated with his hand on it.
He glanced at the window. He shuddered because the vast night itself seemed to be demonically alive.
He picked up the phone. He listened to the dial tone for a while.
Detective Dawson’s office and home numbers were on a piece of notepaper beside the telephone. He stared at the home number for a while. Then, at last, he dialed it.
It rang several times, and he was about to give up, when the receiver was lifted at the other end. But no one spoke.
He waited a couple of seconds, then said, “Hello?”
No answer.
“Is someone there?”
No response.
At first he thought he hadn’t actually reached the Dawson number, that there was a problem with the connection, that he was listening to dead air. But as he was about to hang up, a new and frightening perception seized him. He sensed an evil presence at the other end, a supremely malevolent entity whose malignant energy poured back across the telephone line.
He broke out in a sweat. He felt soiled. His heart raced. His stomach turned sour, sick.
He slammed the phone down. He wiped his damp hands on his pants. They still felt unclean, merely from holding the telephone that had temporarily connected him with the beast in the Dawson apartment. He went to the sink and washed his hands thoroughly.
The thing at the Dawsons’ place was surely one of the entities that Lavelle had summoned to do his dirty work for him. But what was it doing there? What did this mean? Was Lavelle crazy enough to turn loose the powers of darkness not only on the Carramazzas but on the police who were investigating those murders?
If anything happens to Lieutenant Dawson, Hampton thought, I’m responsible because I refused to help him.
Using a paper towel to blot the cold sweat from his
face and neck, he considered his options and tried to decide what he should do next.
8
There were only two men in the street department’s Jeep station wagon, which left plenty of room for Penny, Davey, Rebecca, and Jack.
The driver was a merry-looking, ruddy-faced man with a squashed nose and big ears; he said his name was Burt. He looked closely at Jack’s police ID and, satisfied that it was genuine, was happy to put himself at their disposal, swing the Jeep around, and run them back to headquarters, where they could get another car.
The interior of the Jeep was wonderfully warm and dry.
Jack was relieved when the doors were all safely shut and the Jeep began to pull out.
But just as they were making a U-turn in the middle of the deserted avenue, Burt’s partner, a freckle-faced young man named Leo, saw something moving through the snow, coming toward them from across the street. He said, “Hey, Burt, hold on a sec. Isn’t that a cat out there?”
“So what if it is?” Burt asked.
“He shouldn’t be out in weather like this.”
“Cats go where they want,” Burt said. “You’re the cat fancier; you should know how independent they are.”
“But it’ll freeze to death out there,” Leo said.
As the Jeep completed the turn, and as Burt slowed down a bit to consider Leo’s statement, Jack squinted through the side window at the dark shape loping across the snow; it moved with feline grace. Farther back in the storm, beyond several veils of falling snow, there might have been other things coming this way; perhaps it was even the entire nightmare pack moving in for the kill, but it was hard to tell for sure. However, the first of the goblins, the catlike thing that had caught Leo’s eye, was undeniably out there, only thirty or forty feet away and closing fast.
“Stop just a sec,” Leo said. “Let me get out and scoop up the poor little fella.”
“No!” Jack said. “Get the hell out of here. That’s no damned cat out there.”