something that belonged in Hell.
He took a step toward them.
Janet backed up two steps, pulling Danny along. Her heart was hammering so hard, she knew her tormentor could hear it.
The dog also retreated, alternately whining and growling, his tail tucked between his legs.
“At dawn, you sorry bitch. You and your snot-nosed little brat. Sixteen hours. Only sixteen hours, bitch. Ticktock… ticktock… ticktock….”
The wind died in an instant. The whole world fell silent. No rustling of trees. No distant thunder.
A twig, bristling with half a dozen long eucalyptus leaves, hung in the air a few inches to her right and a foot in front of her face. It was motionless, abandoned by the whooping wind that had supported it, but still magically suspended like the dead scorpion in the souvenir acrylic paperweight that Vince had once bought at an Arizona truckstop.
The cop’s freckled face stretched and bulged with amazing elasticity, like a rubber mask behind which a great pressure had been exerted. His green, catlike eyes appeared ready to pop out of his wildly deformed skull.
Janet wanted to run for the car, her haven, home, lock the door, safe in their home, and drive like hell, but couldn’t do it, dared not turn her back on him. She knew she would be brought down and torn apart in spite of the promised sixteen-hour headstart, because he wanted her to watch his transformation, demanded it, and would be furious if ignored.
The powerful were intensely proud of their power. The gods of fear needed to preen and to be admired, to see how their power humbled and terrified those who were powerless before them.
The cop’s distended face melted, his features running together, eyes liquefying into red pools of hot oil, the oil soaking into his doughy cheeks until he was eyeless, nose sliding into his mouth, lips spreading out across his chin and cheeks, then no chin or cheeks any more, just an oozing mass. But his waxlike flesh didn’t steam or drip to the ground, so the presence of heat was probably an illusion.
Maybe all of it was an illusion, hypnosis. That would explain a lot, raise new questions, yes, but explain a lot.
His body was pulsing, writhing, changing inside his clothes. Then his clothes were dissolving into his body, as if they had never been real clothes but just another part of
On each of the four previous occasions this thing had appeared before her, it had manifested itself differently, as if to impress her with its repertoire. But she was unprepared for what it became now. It relinquished the wolf incarnation even before that body had completely taken form, and assumed a human guise once more, though not the cop. Vince. Even though the facial features were less than half developed, she believed it was going to become her dead husband. The dark hair was the same, the shape of the forehead, the color of one malevolent pale eye.
The resurrection of Vince, buried beneath Arizona sands for the past year, shook Janet more than anything else the creature had done or become, and at last she cried out in fear. Danny screamed, too, and clung even more tightly to her.
The dog did not have the fickle heart of a stray. He stopped whining and responded as if he had been with them since he was a pup. He bared his teeth, snarled, and snapped at the air in warning.
Vince’s face remained less than half formed, but his body took shape, and he was naked as he had been when she had overwhelmed him in his sleep. In his throat, chest, and belly, she thought she saw the wounds left by the kitchen knife with which she had killed him: gaping gashes that were bloodless, but dark and raw and terrible.
Vince raised one arm, reaching toward her.
The dog attacked. Collarless life on the streets had not left Woofer weak or sickly. He was a strong, well- muscled animal, “and when he launched himself at the apparition, he seemed to take flight as readily as a bird.
His snarl was clipped off, and he was miraculously halted in midair, body in the arc of attack, as if he were only an image on a videotape after someone pushed the “pause” button. Flash-frozen. Foamy slaver shone like frost on his black lips and in the fur around his muzzle, and his teeth gleamed as coldly as rows of small sharp icicles.
The eucalyptus twig, clothed in silvery-green leaves, hung unsupported to Janet’s right, the dog to her left. The atmosphere seemed to have crystallized, trapping Woofer for eternity in his moment of courage, yet Janet was able to breathe when she remembered to try.
Still half-formed, Vince stepped toward her, passing the dog.
She turned and ran, pulling Danny with her, expecting to freeze in mid-step. What would it feel like? Would darkness fall over her when she was paralyzed or would she still be able to see Vince walk into view from behind her and come eye to eye again? Would she drop into a well of silence or be able to hear the dead man’s hateful voice? Feel the pain of each blow that he rained on her or be as insensate as the levitated eucalyptus twig?
Like flood waters, a tide of wind roared through the alleyway, nearly knocking her over. The world was filled with sound again.
She spun around and looked back in time to see Woofer return to life in midair and finish his interrupted leap. But there was no longer anyone for him to attack. Vince was gone. The dog landed on the pavement, slipped, skidded, rolled over, and sprang to his feet again, snapping his head around in fear and confusion, looking for his prey as if it had vanished before his eyes.
Danny was crying.
The threat seemed to have passed. The backstreet was deserted but for Janet, her boy, and the dog. Nevertheless, she hurried Danny toward the car, eager to get away, glancing repeatedly at the brush-filled ravine and at the deep shadows between the huge trees as she passed them, half expecting the troll to climb out of its lair again, ready to feed on their hearts sooner than it had promised.
Lightning flickered. The roar of thunder was louder and closer than before.
The air smelled of the rain to come. That ozone taint reminded Janet of the stink of hot blood.
8
Harry Lyon was sitting at a corner table at the rear of the burger restaurant, clasping a water glass in his right hand, his left hand fisted on his thigh. Now and then he took a sip of water, and each sip seemed colder than the one before it, as if the glass absorbed a chill, instead of heat, from his hand.
His gaze traveled over the toppled furniture, ruined plants, broken glass, scattered food, and congealing blood. Nine wounded had been carried away, but two dead bodies lay where they had fallen. A police photographer and lab technicians were at work.
Harry was aware of the room and the people in it, the periodic flash of the camera, but what he saw more clearly was the remembered moon face of the perpetrator peering down at him through the tangled limbs of the mannequins. The parted lips wet with blood. The twin windows of his eyes and the view of Hell beyond.
Harry was no less surprised to be alive now than when they had pulled the dead man and the department- store dummies off him. His stomach still ached dully where the plaster hand of the mannequin had poked into him with the full weight of the perp behind it. He’d thought he’d been shot. The perp had fired twice at close range, but evidently both rounds had been deflected by the intervening plaster torsos and limbs.
Of the five rounds that Harry had fired, at least three had done major damage.
Plainclothes detectives and techs passed in and out of the nearby, bullet-torn kitchen door, on their way to or from the second floor and attic. Some spoke to him or clapped him on the shoulder.
“Good work, Harry.”
“Harry, you okay?”
