Darkfall

movie.

Or maybe they'd come out of the closet.

She looked toward the darkest end of the room, where the closet was. She couldn't see it; only blackness.

Maybe there was a magical, invisible tunnel at the back of the closet, a tunnel that only goblins could see and use.

That was ridiculous. Or was it? The very idea of goblins was ridiculous, too; yet they were out there; she'd seen them.

Davey's breathing became deep and slow and rhythmic. He was asleep.

Penny envied him. She knew she'd never sleep again.

Time passed. Slowly.

Her gaze moved around and around the dark room. The window. The door. The closet. The window.

She didn't know where the goblins would come from, but she knew, without doubt, that they would come.

XIII

Lavelle sat in his dark bedroom.

The additional assassins had risen out of the pit and had crept off into the night, into the storm-lashed city. Soon, both of the Dawson children would be slaughtered, reduced to nothing more than bloody mounds of dead meat.

That thought pleased and excited Lavelle. It even gave him an erection.

The rituals had drained him. Not physically or mentally. He felt alert, fresh, strong. But his Bocor's power had been depleted, and it was time to replenish it. At the moment, he was a Bocor in name only; drained like this, he was really just a man — and he didn't like being just a man.

Embraced by the darkness, he reached upward with his mind, up through the ceiling, through the roof of the house, through the snow-filled air, up toward the rivers of evil energy that flowed across the great city. He carefully avoided those currents of benign energy that also surged through the night, for they were of no use whatsoever to him; indeed, they posed a danger to him. He tapped into the darkest, foulest of those ethereal waters and let them pour down into him, until his own reservoirs were full once more.

In minutes he was reborn. Now he was more than a man. Less than a god, yes. But much, much more than just a man.

He had one more act of sorcery to perform this night, and he was happily anticipating it. He was going to humble Jack Dawson. At last he was going to make Dawson understand how awesome was the power of a masterful Bocor. Then, when Dawson's children were exterminated, the detective would understand how foolish he had been to put them at such risk, to defy a Bocor. He would see how easily he could have saved them — simply by swallowing his pride and walking away from the investigation. Then it would be clear to the detective that he, himself, had signed his own children's death warrants, and that terrible realization would shatter him.

XIV

Penny sat straight up in bed and almost shouted for Aunt Faye.

She had heard something. A strange, shrill cry. It wasn't human. Faint. Far away. Maybe in another apartment, several floors farther down in the building. The cry seemed to have come to her through the heating ducts.

She waited tensely. A minute. Two minutes. Three.

The cry wasn't repeated. There were no other unnatural sounds, either.

But she knew what she had heard and what it meant. They were coming for her and Davey. They were on their way now. Soon, they would be here.

XV

This time, their love-making was slow, lazy, achingly tender, filled with much nuzzling and wordless murmuring and soft-soft stroking. A series of dreamy sensations: a feeling of floating, a feeling of being composed only of sunlight and other energy, an exhilaratingly weightless tumbling, tumbling. This time, it was not so much an act of sex as it was an act of emotional bonding, a spiritual pledge made with the flesh. And when, at last, Jack spurted deep within her velvet recesses, he felt as if he were fusing with her, melting into her, becoming one with her., and he sensed that she felt the same thing.

“That was wonderful.”

“Perfect.”

“Better than a peanut butter and onion sandwich?”

“Almost.”

“You bastard.”

“Hey, peanut butter and onion sandwiches are pretty darned terrific, you know!”

“I love you,” he said.

“I'm glad,” she said.

That was an improvement.

She still couldn't bring herself to say she loved him, too. But he wasn't particularly bothered by that. He knew she did.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressing.

She was standing on the other side of the bed, slipping into her blue robe.

Both of them were startled by a sudden violent movement. A framed poster from a Jasper Johns art exhibition tore loose of its mountings and flew off the wall. It was a large poster, three-and-a-half-feet-by-two- and-a half-feet, framed behind glass. It seemed to hang in the air for a moment, vibrating, and then it struck the floor at the foot of the bed with a tremendous crash.

“What the hell!” Jack said.

“What could've done that?” Rebecca said.

The sliding closet door flew open with a bang, slammed shut, flew open again.

The six-drawer highboy tipped away from the wall, toppled toward Jack, and he jumped out of the way, and the big piece of furniture hit the floor with the sound of a bomb explosion.

Rebecca backed against the wall and stood there, rigid and wide-eyed, her hands fisted at her sides.

The air was cold. Wind whirled through the room. Not just a draft, but a wind almost as powerful as the one that whipped through the city streets, outside. Yet there was nowhere that a cold wind could have gained admission; the door and the window were closed tight.

And now, at the window, it seemed as if invisible hands grabbed the drapes and tore them loose of the rod from which they were hung. The drapes dropped in a heap, and then the rod itself was torn out of the wall and thrown aside.

Drawers slid all the way out of the nightstands and fell onto the floor, spilling their contents.

Several strips of wallpaper began to peel off the walls, starting at the top and going down.

Jack turned this way and that, frightened, confused, not sure what he should do.

The dresser mirror cracked in a spiderweb pattern.