from the outside world faded away. He could sense the pulse of agony at the heart of the Alcott Hotel.
His foot plunged through a step; he fell to his knees, ashes whirling around him, as the entire staircase shook. It took him a moment to work his foot free, and then he forced himself upward. Cold sweat and soot clung to his face. The screaming spectral voices led him to the third floor; he was aware also of individual voices—low, agonized moaning, snippets of shouts, cries of terror—that he seemed to feel vibrating in his bones. The third-floor corridor was dark, puddled with ashy water, clogged with burned, unidentifiable shapes. Billy found a shattered window and leaned against it to inhale some fresh air Down on the street, a white van marked with the eye of Chicago had pulled up to the barricade. Three people, a woman and two men—one with a camera unit braced against his shoulder—were having a heated argument with the cop while the drunks shouted and whistled.
The voices of the dead urged Billy on. He continued along the corridor, feeling something like a cold hand exploring his features as a blind man might. The floor groaned under his weight, and from above ashes shifted down like black snow. His shoes crunched on a layer of debris.
To his right there was a doorway that had been shattered by firemen. Beyond was a thick gloom of gray ashes. Billy could sense the terrible cold in that room, leaking out into the corridor. It was the chill of terror, and Billy shivered in its frigid touch.
Beyond that doorway, he knew, was what he had come here to find.
Billy braced himself, his heart hammering, and stepped through the doorway. The voices stopped.
A pall of black ashes and smoke drifted around him. It had been a large room; he looked up, saw that most of the ceiling had collapsed in a morass of charred timbers. Water was still seeping down from above and lay a half- inch deep around the objects on the floor: charred rib cages, arm and leg bones, unrecognizable shapes that might once have been human beings. Around them, like black barbed wire, was a metal framework that had been melded together by intense heat. Bed frames, Billy realized. Bunk beds. They were sleeping in here when the ceiling collapsed on top of them.
There was a silence, as of something waiting.
He could feel them all around him. They were in the smoke, in the ash, in the burned bones and malformed shapes. They were in the air and in the walls.
There was too much agony here; it weighed heavily in the dense air, and terror crackled like electricity. But it was too late to run, Billy knew. He would have to do what he could.
But there was something else here, as well. The hair at the back of his neck stirred, and his flesh prickled. Hatred oozed from this room. Something in here seethed; something wanted to tear him to pieces.
A shape stirred in a far corner and rose up from the ashes, taking hideous form. It stood seven feet tall, and its narrowed eyes glittered like red beads. The shape changer's boarlike face grinned. 'I knew you'd come,' it whispered, in a voice neither masculine nor feminine, young nor old. 'I've been waiting for you.'
Billy stepped back, into puddled water.
'Oh, you're not
'Yes,' Billy said. 'I am.' And he saw a flicker of hesitation in the shape changer's gaze. He wasn't sure of the limits of the shape changer's powers—if indeed, there were any—but it seemed to him that as he got stronger, the shape changer grew more uncertain, more threatened. Perhaps, he thought, the beast couldn't physically hurt him in that demonic, elemental shape, but it could affect his mind, possibly make him hurt himself. If the shape changer ever devised a way to attack him physically, he feared he couldn't survive against such a hideous force.
The thing's form shifted, like a reflection seen in a rippling pond of stagnant water, and suddenly it looked like Lee Sayre. 'You're a meddler,' it said, in Sayre's voice. 'Your family's full of meddlers. Some of them couldn't stand up to me, boy. Do you think
Billy didn't reply, but stood his ground.
Lee Sayre's face grinned. 'Good! Then it'll be you and me, boy, with a roomful of souls in the balance! Think fast, boy!'
The floor creaked and pitched downward, dropping Billy to his knees in the water. It's a trick! he thought, as the floor seemed to sway precariously. An illusion, conjured up by the beast!
A blizzard of lighted matches swirled around Billy, burning him on the face and hands, sparking his hair and sweater. He cried out and tried to shield his face with his arms. A trick! Not really burning, not really . . . ! If he was strong enough, he knew, he could overcome the shape changer's tricks. He looked up into the matches that sizzled off his cheeks and forehead, and he tried to concentrate on seeing the shape changer not as Lee Sayre, but as it really looked. The blizzard of matches faded away, and the boar-thing stood before him.
'Tricks,' Billy said, and looked up through the darkness at Melissa Pettus.
A fireball suddenly came crashing through the ceiling upon him, burying him in flaming debris. He could smell himself burning—a May Night smell—and he screamed as he tried to fight free. He ran, his clothes on fire, his mind panicked.
Before he reached the doorway, he stepped through a gaping hole in the floor that had been hidden by rubble.
As he plunged through, he caught a jagged piece of twisted metal bed frame that cut into his hand. His body hung halfway through the hole, his legs dangling twenty feet over a pile of timbers studded with blackened nails. His clothes were still on fire, and he could hear his skin sizzling.
'Let go, Billy,' Melissa whispered. 'It hurts, doesn't it? It hurts to burn.'
'No!' he shouted. If he let go, he knew he'd fall to his death. The shape changer had wanted him to flee, had wanted him to step through this hole. Panic, terror, illusions, and insanity—those were the shape changer's most lethal weapons.
'Your mother's dead,' Melissa's pretty face said. 'The cowboy came and cut her throat. Your little house is a heap of ashes. Billy, your hand's bleeding—'
'Somebody up there?' a voice shouted from below.
'Let go, let go!' the shape changer, in Melissa's skin, said urgently.
Billy concentrated on the pain in his hand. His flesh had stopped sizzling. He turned his full attention to getting out of the hole. His clothes weren't on fire, weren't even scorched. He was strong, he told himself; he could resist the shape changer's weapons. Melissa's form began to fade away, and in its place was the boar. Billy climbed up and crouched on his knees in the water. What had the thing said about his mother? Lies, all lies! He had to hurry, he told himself, before the firemen found him in here.
There were scorched bones lying around him. A rib cage lay nearby. In the corner was a hideous, blackened form still wearing the shreds of clothes, its black skull-like head lolling.
Billy could feel them all around him, terrified and confused. They murmured and moaned, crowding around him to flee the dark power of the shape changer.
'No fear,' Billy whispered. 'Give up the pain, give up . . .'
'Get out of the dark place!' Jimmy Jed Falconer bellowed, his eyes blazing with righteous anger.
Something as soft as silk brushed Billy's face. A formless, pale bluish white mass had begun seeping out of the wall, reaching tentatively toward him. A second revenant hung in a corner like a spider web, clinging fearfully to the wall.
'You're not strong enough!' Falconer shouted. 'You can't do it!'
'Give up the pain,' Billy whispered, trying to mentally draw them closer. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating. When he opened them, he saw a third revenant drifting nearer, taking on a vague human shape, arms reaching to grasp for him.
'You have to leave this place,' Billy said. 'You don't belong here.' And suddenly he shivered, as a cold white shape drifted over him from behind; it was as soft as velvet, and was so cold it made his bones ache. Two appendages that might have been arms enfolded him.
'No!' the shape changer thundered, reverting to the beast.
The revenant began to sink into him. Billy gritted his teeth as its human memories filled him; first the panic as the fire spread and the ceiling crashed down, then the agony of burning flesh. Then in his mind he saw a splay of cards on a table, a hand reaching for a bottle of Red Dagger wine, golden wheatfields seen from a speeding boxcar, dreaded policemen swinging clubs. Memories and emotions swept through him like leaves blown from dying trees.
Another form drifted closer, gripping Billy's hand and crawling up his arm.
