consequently Heaven — were as real as the earth; they were merely other dimensions, other planes of physical existence. Normally, it was impossible for a living man or woman to cross over from one plane to the other. But religion was the crude and clumsy science that had theorized ways in which to bring the planes together, if only temporarily, and magic was the tool of that science.
After absorbing that realization, it seemed as easy to believe in voodoo or Christianity or any other religion as it was to believe in the existence of the atom.
He threw the holy water, jar and all, into the pit.
The goblins surged through the communion rail and up the steps toward the altar platform.
The kids screamed, and Father Walotsky held his rosary out in front of him as if certain it would render him impervious to the assault. Rebecca drew her gun, though she knew it was useless, took careful aim on the first of the pack-
And all one hundred of the goblins turned to clumps of earth which cascaded harmlessly down the altar steps.
The worm-thing swung its hateful head back toward Carver and hissed and struck at him.
He screamed.
Then gasped in surprise as nothing more than dirt showered over him.
The holy water disappeared into the pit.
The jubilant squeals, the roars of hatred, the triumphant screams all ceased as abruptly as if someone had pulled the plug on a stereo. The silence lasted only a second, and then the nigh' was filled with cries of anger, rage, frustration, and anguish.
The earth shook more violently than before.
Jack was knocked off his feet, but he fell backwards, away from the pit.
He saw that the rim had stopped dissolving. The hole wasn't getting any larger.
The mammoth appendage that towered over him, like some massive fairytale serpent, did not take a swipe at him as he had been afraid it might. Instead, its disgusting mouth sucking ceaselessly at the night, it collapsed back into the pit.
Jack got to his feet again. His overcoat was caked with snow.
The earth continued to shake. He felt as if he were standing on an egg from which something deadly was about to hatch. Cracks radiated out from the pit, half a dozen of them — four, six, even eight inches wide and as much as ten feet long. Jack found himself between the two largest gaps, on an unstable island of rocking, heaving earth. The snow melted into the cracks, and light shone up from the strange depths, and heat rose in waves as if from an open furnace door, and for one ghastly moment it seemed as if the entire world would shatter underfoot. Then quickly, mercifully, the cracks closed up again, sealed tight, as if they had never been.
The light began to fade within the pit, changing from red to orange around the edges.
The hellish voices were fading, too.
The gates were easing shut.
With a flush of triumph, Jack inched closer to the rim, squinting into the hole, trying to see more of the monstrous and fantastic shapes that writhed and raged beyond the glare.
The light suddenly pulsed, grew brighter, startling him. The screaming and bellowing became louder.
He stepped back.
The light dimmed once more, then grew brighter again, dimmed, grew brighter. The immortal entities beyond the Gates were struggling to keep them open, to force them wide.
The rim of the pit began to dissolve again. Earth crumbled away in small clods. Then stopped. Then started. In spurts, the pit was still growing.
Jack's heart seemed to beat in concert with the crumbling of the pit's perimeter. Each time the dirt began to fall away, his heart seemed to stop; each time the perimeter stabilized, his heart began to beat again.
Maybe Carver Hampton had been wrong. Maybe holy water and the good intentions of a righteous man had not been sufficient to put an end to it. Perhaps it had gone too far. Perhaps nothing could prevent Armageddon now.
Two glossy black, segmented, whiplike appendages, each an inch in diameter, lashed up from the pit, snapped in front of Jack, snaked around him. One wound around his left leg from ankle to crotch. The other looped around his chest, spiraled down his left arm, curled around his wrist, snatched at his fingers. His leg was jerked out from under him. He fell, thrashing, flailing desperately at the attacker but to no avail; it had a steel grip; he couldn't free himself, couldn't pry it loose. The beast from which the tentacles sprouted was hidden far down in the pit, and now it tugged at him, dragged him toward the brink, a demonic fisherman reeling in its catch. A serrated spine ran the length of each tentacle, and the serrations were sharp; they didn't immediately cut through his clothes, but where they crossed the bare skin of his wrist and hand, they sliced open his flesh, cut deep.
He had never known such pain.
He was suddenly scared that he would never see Davey, Penny, or Rebecca again.
He began to scream.
In St. Patrick's Cathedral, Rebecca took two steps toward the piles of now-ordinary earth that had, only a moment ago, been living creatures, but she stopped short when the scattered dirt trembled with a current of impossible, perverse life. The stuff wasn't dead after all. The grains and clots and clumps of soil seemed to draw moisture from the air; the stuff became damp; the separate pieces in each loose pile began to quiver and strain and draw laboriously toward the others. This evilly enchanted earth was apparently trying to regain its previous forms, struggling to reconstitute the goblins. One small lump, lying apart from all the others, began to shape itself into a tiny, wickedly clawed foot.
“Die, damnit,” Rebecca said. “
Sprawled on the rim of the pit, certain that he was going to be pulled into it, his attention split between the void in front of him and the pain blazing in his savaged hand, Jack screamed-
— and at that same instant the tentacle around his arm and torso abruptly whipped free of him. The second demonic appendage slithered away from his left leg a moment later.
The hell-light dimmed.
Now, the beast below was wailing in pain and torment of its own. Its tentacles lashed erratically at the night above the pit.
In that moment of chaos and crisis, the gods of
The rim of the pit began to crumble again. The hole grew wider. The Gates were again rolling open. The light rising out of the earth turned from orange to crimson once more.
Jack pushed up from his prone position and knelt at the brink. He could feel the earth slowly — and then not so slowly — coming apart beneath his knees. Blood was streaming off his torn hand, dripping from all five fingertips. He leaned out precariously, over the pit, and shook his hand, flinging scarlet droplets into the center of the seething light.
Below, the shrieking and keening swelled to an even more ear-splitting pitch than it had when he'd tossed the holy water into the breach. The light from the devil's furnace dimmed and flickered, and the perimeter of the pit stabilized.
He cast more of his blood into the chasm, and the tortured cries of the damned faded but only slightly. He blinked and squinted at the pulsing, shifting, mysteriously indefinable bottom of the hole, leaned out even farther to get a better look-
— and with a
