“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.
VII
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.
VIII
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 see,” 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.”
Startled, Burt looked over his shoulder at Jack.
Penny began to shout the same thing again and again, and Davey took up her chant: “Don't let them in, don't let them in here, don't let them in!”
Face pressed to the window in his door, Leo said, “Jesus, you're right. It isn't any cat.”
“Move!” Jack shouted.
The thing leaped and
struck the side window in front of Leo's face. The glass cracked but held.
Leo yelped, jumped, scooted backwards across the front seat, crowding Burt.
Burt tramped down on the accelerator, and the tires spun for a moment.
The hideous cat-thing clung to the cracked glass.
Penny and Davey were screaming. Rebecca tried to shield them from the sight of the goblin.
It probed at them with eyes of fire.
Jack could almost feel the heat of that inhuman gaze. He wanted to empty his revolver at the thing, put half a dozen slugs into it, though he knew he couldn't kill it.
The tires stopped spinning, and the Jeep took off with a lurch and a shudder.
Burt held the steering wheel with one hand and used the other hand to try to push Leo out of the way, but Leo wasn't going to move even an inch closer to the fractured window where the cat-thing had attached itself.
The goblin licked the glass with its black tongue.
The Jeep careened toward the divider in the center of the avenue, and it started to slide.
Jack said, “Damnit, don't lose control!”
“I can't steer with him on my lap,” Burt said.
He rammed an elbow into Leo's side, hard enough to accomplish what all the pushing and shoving and shouting hadn't managed to do; Leo moved — although not much.
The cat-thing grinned at them. Double rows of sharp and pointed teeth gleamed.
Burt stopped the sliding Jeep just before it would have hit the center divider. In control again, he accelerated.
The engine roared.
Snow flew up around them.
Leo was making odd gibbeting sounds, and the kids were crying, and for some reason Burt began blowing the horn, as if he thought the sound would frighten the thing and make it let go.
Jack's eyes met Rebecca's. He wondered if his own gaze was as bleak as hers.
Finally, the goblin lost its grip, fell off, tumbled away into the snowy street.
Leo said, “Thank God,” and collapsed back into his own corner of the front seat.
Jack turned and looked out the rear window. Other dark beasts were coming out of the whiteness of the storm. They loped after the Jeep, but they couldn't keep up with it. They quickly dwindled.
Disappeared.
But they were still out there. Somewhere.
Everywhere.
IX
The shed.
The hot, dry air.
The stench of Hell.
Again, the orange light abruptly grew brighter than it had been, not a lot brighter, just a little, and at the same time the air became slightly hotter, and the noises coming out of the pit grew somewhat louder and angrier, although they were still more of a whisper than a shout.
Again, around the perimeter of the hole, the earth loosened of its own accord, dropped away from the rim, tumbled to the bottom and vanished in the pulsing orange glow. The diameter had increased by more than two inches before the earth became stable once more.
And the pit was bigger.
PART THREE
Wednesday, 11:20 P.M.-Thursday, 2:30 A.M.
You know, Tolstoy, like myself, wasn't taken
in by superstitions-like science and medicine.
— George Bernard Shaw
There is superstition in avoiding superstition.
— Francis Bacon
CHAPTER SEVEN
I
At headquarters, the underground garage was lighted but not very brightly lighted. Shadows crouched in corners; they spread like a dark fungus on the walls; they lay in wait between the rows of cars and other vehicles; they clung to the concrete ceilings and watched all that went on beneath them.
Tonight, Jack was scared of the garage. Tonight, the omnipresent shadows themselves seemed to be alive and, worse, seemed to be creeping closer with great cleverness and stealth.
Rebecca and the kids evidently felt the same way about the place. They stayed close together, and they looked around worriedly, their faces and bodies tense.
It's all right, Jack told himself. The goblins can't have known where we were going. For the time being, they've lost track of us. For the moment, at least, we're safe.
But he didn't feel safe.
The night man in charge of the garage was Ernie Tewkes. His thick black hair was combed straight back from his forehead, and he wore a pencil-thin mustache that looked odd on his wide upper lip.
“But each of you already signed out a car,” Ernie said, tapping the requisition sheet on his clipboard.
“Well, we need two more,” Jack said.
“That's against regulations, and I—”
“To hell with the regulations,” Rebecca said. “Just give us the cars. Now.”
“Where're the two you already got?” Ernie asked. “You didn't wrack them up, did you?”
“Of course not,” Jack said. “They're bogged down.”
“Mechanical trouble?”
“No. Stuck in snow drifts,” Jack lied.
They had ruled out going back for the car at Rebecca's apartment, and they had also decided they didn't dare return to Faye and Keith's place. They were sure the devil-things would be waiting at both locations.
“Drifts?” Ernie said. “Is that all? We'll just send a tow truck out, get you loose, and put you on the road again.”
“We don't have time for that,” Jack said impatiently, letting his gaze roam over the darker portions of the cavernous garage. “We need two cars right now.”
“Regulations say—”
“Listen,” Rebecca said, “weren't a number of cars assigned to the Carramazza task force?”
“Sure,” Ernie said. “But—”
“And aren't some of those cars still here in the garage, right now, unused?”
“Well, at the moment, nobody's using them,” Ernie admitted. “But maybe—”
“And who's in charge of the task force?” Rebecca demanded.
“Well… you are. The two of you.”
“This is an emergency related to the Carramazza case, and we need those cars.”
“But you've already got cars checked out, and regulations say you've got to fill out breakdown or loss reports on them before you can get—”
“Forget the bullshit bureaucracy,” Rebecca said angrily. “Get us new wheels now, this minute, or so help me (loaf I'll rip that funny little mustache out of your face, take the keys off your pegboard there, and get the cars myself.”
Ernie stared wide-eyed at her, evidently stunned by both the threat and the vehemence with which it was delivered.
In this particular instance, Jack was delighted to see Rebecca revert to a nail-eating, hard-nosed Amazon.
“Move!” she said, taking one step toward Ernie.
Ernie moved. Fast.
While they waited by the dispatcher's booth for the first car to be brought around, Penny kept looking from one shadowy area to another. Again and again, she thought she saw things moving in the gloom: darkness slithering through darkness; a ripple in the shadows between two patrol cars; a throbbing in the pool of blackness that lay behind a police riot wagon; a shifting, malevolent shape in the pocket of darkness in that corner over there; a watchful, hungry shadow hiding among the ordinary shadows in that other corner; movement just beyond the stairway and more movement on the other side of the elevators and something scuttling stealthily across the dark ceiling and-
Stop it!
Imagination, she told herself. If the place was crawling with goblins, they'd have attacked us already.
The garage man returned with a slightly battered blue Chevrolet that had no police department insignia on the doors, though it did have a big antenna because of its police radio. Then he hurried away to get the second car.
Daddy and Rebecca checked under the seats of the first one, to be sure no goblins were hiding there.
Penny didn't want to be separated from her father, even though she knew separation was part of the plan, even though she had heard all
the good reasons why it was essential for them to split up, and even though the time to leave had now come. She and Davey would go with Rebecca and spend the next few hours driving slowly up and down the main avenues, where the snowplows were working the hardest and where there was the least danger of getting stuck; they didn't dare get stuck because they were vulnerable when they stayed in one place too long, safe only while they were on wheels and moving, where the goblins couldn't get a fix on them. In the meantime her father would go up to Harlem to see a man named Carver Hampton, who would probably be able to help him find Lavelle. Then he was going after that witchdoctor. He was sure he wouldn't be in terrible danger. He said that, for some reason he really didn't understand, Lavelle's magic had no effect on him. He said putting the cuffs on Lavelle wouldn't be any more difficult or dangerous than putting them on any other criminal. He meant it, too. And Penny wanted to believe that he was absolutely right. But deep in her heart, she was certain she would never see him again.
Nevertheless, she didn't cry too much, and she didn't hang on him too much, and she got into the car with Davey and Rebecca. As they drove out of the garage, up the exit ramp, she looked back. Daddy was waving at them. Then they reached the street and turned right, and he was out of sight. From that moment, it seemed to Penny that he was already as good as dead.
II
A few minutes after midnight, in Harlem, Jack parked in front of Rada. He knew Hampton lived above the store, and he figured there must be a private entrance to the apartment, so he went around to the side of the building, where he found a door with a street number.
There were a lot of lights on the second floor. Every window glowed brightly.
Standing with his back to the pummeling wind, Jack pushed the buzzer beside the door but wasn't satisfied with just a short ring; he held his thumb there, pressing down so hard that it hurt a little. Even through the closed door, the sound of the buzzer swiftly became irritating. Inside, it must be five or six times louder. If Hampton looked out through the fisheye security lens in the door and saw who was waiting and decided not to open up, then he'd better have a damned good pair of earplugs. In five minutes the buzzer would give him a headache. In ten minutes it would be like an icepick probing in his ears. If that didn't work, however, Jack intended to escalate the battle; he'd look around for a pile of loose bricks or several empty bottles or other hefty pieces of rubbish to throw through Hampton's windows. He didn't care about being charged with reckless use of authority; he didn't care about getting in trouble and maybe losing his badge. He was past the point of polite requests and civilized debate.
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