that slightly liquid shifting sensation when they had moved it.
'Here goes,' the janitor said, and began to pound the chisel under
the board with swift blows of the hammer. The board hiked up a
bit, revealing a double row of nails that reminded Dex absurdly of
teeth. The janitor levered the handle of his chisel down and the
board pulled loose, the nails shrieking out of the wood. He did the
same thing at the other end, and the board came free, clattering to
the floor. Dex set it aside, noticing that even the nails looked
different, somehow--thicker, squarer at the tip, and without that
blue-steel sheen that is the mark of a sophisticated alloying
process.
The janitor was peering into the crate through the long, narrow
strip he had uncovered. 'Can't see nothin,' he said. 'Where'd I
leave my light?'
'Never mind,' Dex said. 'Go on and open it.'
'Okay.' He took off a second board, then a third. Six or seven had
been nailed across the top of the box. He began on the fourth,
reaching across the space he had already uncovered to place his
chisel under the board, when the crate began to whistle.
It was a sound very much like the sound a teakettle makes when it
has reached a rolling boil, Dex told Henry Northrup; no cheerful
whistle this, but something like an ugly, hysterical shriek by a
tantrumy child. And this suddenly dropped and thickened into a
low, hoarse growling sound. It was not loud, but it had a primitive,
savage sound that stood Dex Stanley's hair up on the slant. The
janitor stared around at him, his eyes widening... and then his arm
was seized. Dex did not see what grabbed it; his eyes had gone
instinctively to the man's face.
The janitor screamed, and the sound drove a stiletto of panic into
Dex's chest. The thought that came unbidden was: This is the first
time in my life that I've heard a grown man scream--what a
sheltered life I've led!
The janitor, a fairly big guy who weighed maybe two hundred
pounds, was suddenly yanked powerfully to one side. Toward the
crate. 'Help me!' He screamed. 'Oh help doc it's got me it's biting
me it's biting meeeee--'
Dex told himself to run forward and grab the janitor's free arm, but
his feet might as well have been bonded to the floor. The janitor
had been pulled into the crate up to his shoulder. That crazed
snarling went on and on. The crate slid backwards along the table
for a foot or so and then came firmly to rest against a bolted
instrument mount. It began to rock back and forth. The janitor
screamed and gave a tremendous lunge away from the crate.The
end of the box came up off the table and then smacked back down.
Part of his arm came out of the crate, and Dex saw to his horror
that the gray sleeve of his shirt was chewed and tattered and
soaked with blood. Smiling crescent bites were punched into what
he could see of the man's skin through the shredded flaps of cloth.
Then something that must have been incredibly strong yanked him
back down. The thing in the crate began to snarl and gobble. Every
