Darkfall

been bitten. Rats are filthy. They carry all kinds of diseases. They're disgusting. I simply can't imagine any school for young children being allowed to remain open if it has rats. The Board of Health has got to be told about this first thing tomorrow. Your father's going to have to do something about the situation immediately. I won't allow him to procrastinate. Not where your health is concerned. Why, your poor dear mother would be appalled by such a place, a school with rats in the wall. Rats! My God, rats carry everything from rabies to the plague!”

Faye droned on and on.

Penny tuned her out.

There wasn't any point in telling them about her own locker and the silver-eyed things in the school basement. Faye would insist they had been rats, too. When that woman got something in her head, there was no way of getting it out again, no way of changing her mind. Now, Faye was looking forward to confronting their father about the rats; she relished the thought of blaming him for putting them in a rat-infested school, and she wouldn't be the least receptive to anything Penny said, to any explanation or any conflicting facts that might put rats completely out of the picture and thereby spare their father from a scolding.

Even if I tell her about the hand, Penny thought, the little hand that came under the green gate, she'll stick to the idea that it's rats. She'll say I was scared and made a mistake about what I saw. She'll say it wasn't really a hand at all, but a rat, a slimy old rat biting at my boot. She'll turn it all around. She'll make it support the story she wants to believe, and it'll just be more ammunition for her to use against Daddy. Damnit, Aunt Faye, why're you so stubborn?

Faye was chattering about the need for a parent to thoroughly investigate a school before sending children to it.

Penny wondered when her father would come to get them, and she prayed he wouldn't be too late. She wanted him to come before bedtime. She didn't want to be alone, just her and Davey, in a dark room, even if it was Aunt Faye's guest room, blocks and blocks away from their own apartment. She was pretty sure the goblins would find them, even here. She had decided to take her father aside and tell him everything. He wouldn't want to believe in goblins, at first. But now there was Davey's lunchbox to consider. And if she went back to their apartment with her father and showed him the holes in Davey's plastic baseball bat, she might be able to convince him. Daddy was a grownup, like Aunt Faye, sure, but he wasn't stubborn, and he listened to kids in a way that few grown-ups did.

Faye said, “With all the money he got from your mother's insurance and from the settlement the hospital made, he could afford to send you to a top-of-the-line school. Absolutely top-of-the-line. I can't imagine why he settled on this Wellton joint.”

Penny bit her lip, said nothing.

She stared down at the magazine. The pictures and words swam in and out of focus.

The worst thing was that now she knew, beyond a doubt, that the goblins weren't just after her. They wanted Davey, too.

III

Rebecca had not waited for Jack, though he had asked her to. While he'd been with Captain Gresham, working out the details of the protection that would be provided for Penny and Davey, Rebecca had apparently put on her coat and gone home.

When Jack found that she had gone, he sighed and said softly, “You sure aren't easy, baby.”

On his desk were two books about voodoo, which he had checked out of the library yesterday. He stared at them for a long moment, then decided he needed to learn more about Bocors and Houngons before tomorrow morning. He put on his coat and gloves, picked up the books, tucked them under one arm, and went down to the subterranean garage, beneath the building.

Because he and Rebecca were now in charge of the emergency task force, they were entitled to perquisites beyond the reach of ordinary homicide detectives, including the full-time use of an unmarked police sedan for each of them, not just during duty hours but around the clock. The car assigned to Jack was a one-year-old, sour-green Chevrolet that bore a few dents and more than a few scratches. It was the totally stripped-down model, without options or luxuries of any kind, just a get-around car, not a racer-and-chaser. The motor pool mechanics had even put the snow chains on the tires. The heap was ready to roll.

He backed out of the parking space, drove up the ramp to the street exit. He stopped and waited while a city truck, equipped with a big snowplow and a salt spreader and lots of flashing lights, passed by in the storm- thrashed darkness.

In addition to the truck, there were only two other vehicles on the street. The storm virtually had the night to itself. Yet, when the truck was gone and the way was clear, Jack still hesitated.

He switched on the windshield wipers.

To head toward Rebecca's apartment, he would have to turn left.

To go to the Jamisons' place, he ought to turn right.

The wipers flogged back and forth, back and forth, left, right, left, right.

He was eager to be with Penny and Davey, eager to hug them, to see them warm and alive and smiling.

Right, left, right.

Of course, they weren't in any real danger at the moment. Even if Lavelle was serious when he threatened them, he wouldn't make his move this soon, and he wouldn't know where to find them even if he did want to make his move.

Left, right, left.

They were perfectly safe with Faye and Keith. Besides, Jack had told Faye that he probably wouldn't make it for dinner; she was already expecting him to be late.

The wipers beat time to his indecision.

Finally he took his foot off the brake, pulled into the street, and turned left.

He needed to talk to Rebecca about what had happened between them last night. She had avoided the subject all day. He couldn't allow her to continue to dodge it. She would have to face up to the changes that last night had wrought in both their lives, major changes which he welcomed wholeheartedly but about which she seemed, at best, ambivalent.

Along the edges of the car roof, wind whistled hollowly through the metal heading, a cold and mournful sound.

Crouching in deep shadows by the garage exit, the thing watched Jack Dawson drive away in the unmarked sedan.

Its shining silver eyes did not blink even once.

Then, keeping to the shadows, it crept back into the deserted, silent garage.

It hissed. It muttered. It gobbled softly to itself in an eerie, raspy little voice.

Finding the protection of darkness and shadows wherever it wished to go — even where there didn't seem to have been shadows only a moment before — the thing slunk from car to car, beneath and around them, until it came to a drain in the garage floor. It descended into the midnight regions below.

IV

Lavelle was nervous.

Without switching on any lamps, he stalked restlessly through his house, upstairs and down, back and forth, looking for nothing, simply unable to keep still, always moving in deep darkness but never bumping into furniture or doorways, pacing as swiftly and surely as if the rooms were all brightly lighted. He wasn't blind in darkness, never the least disoriented. Indeed, he was at home in shadows. Darkness, after all, was a part of him.

Usually, in either darkness or light, he was supremely confident and self-assured. But now, hour by hour, his