and crooked limbs. She had the shriveled, naked body of a very old woman, her breasts drooping sacks, her back bent, her fingers twisted arthritically.
She leaped at Diane now, slapping her with incredible force directly across the face, then pressing her gnarled hands to her shoulders and burning her in some method Diane did not understand. Screaming, reeling from pain, Diane smelled her own flesh sear from the witch's touch.
In the deep voice, but now grown even deeper, the witch said, 'Only because the little girl loves you so much will I spare you. But don't try to stop me in any way or you will die. Do you understand?'
The hag moved toward the window, a grotesque shape in silhouette against the moonlit curtains.
She turned back toward Diane once and said, in a voice curiously softer now, 'The little girl is struggling to take control again. She wants you to know how much she loves you.'
Then the hag threw herself against the window, glass falling in shattered, silver pieces to the snowy ground below, and was gone in the whipping wind that came in through the smashed window frame.
Diane, sobbing now, pulled herself to her feet and began running down the stairs to the ground floor.
All she could think about was the witch's pledge to kill. And that could easily mean she would kill Robert Clark as well.
She ran out into the bitterly cold, but surprisingly bright, night, and kept on running until she reached the McCay house.
Jeff McCay lay writhing on the hallway floor. Bent over him, his wife, Mindy, kept calling his name.
Robert Clark knelt down next to her to see if he could help the man. McCay seemed to be choking. His hands were at his throat, as if he were trying to dislodge a piece of trapped food.
Clark took the man's hands away. Jeff McCay looked up at him with startled, terrified eyes. Clark had seen this kind of panic many times before in 'Nam. A man was injured and all he wanted to know from the medic was, A m I going to live?
Gasping, grasping at air, thrashing about insanely, Jeff McCay looked over at his wife and started sobbing.
She leaned past Clark and took her husband in her arms.
'This is how it's been,' Mindy said there in the darkness of the hall. 'We know she's going to kill us because we killed her. But she punishes us. She almost made Jeff commit suicide the night he ran out of here naked. She puts spells on us, like this one where he seems to be choking to death. I had a period so bloody I had to sit in the bathtub, and twice my whole body broke out with sores. And you saw how she turns us into ghouls. That's why we could never have company-or go to the police — because every time we tried, she would do something to prevent us. All she's done since she came back is torture us.'
Jeff continued to cry out and gasp in his wife's arms.
Downstairs, glass smashed in the living room.
'God, it's her!' Mindy cried, and grabbed Clark with one hand, her other holding her arm. 'Please help us! Please!'
Clark got to his feet and pulled out his service revolver, already sensing that it was going to do him little if any good.
Even up there, the air was choked, fetid. He could smell the presence of a demon. A disbeliever, he'd once been called to a house where a demonic infestation had taken place. He'd remained skeptical but there was one thing he'd been unable to dismiss, and that was the peculiar and terrible odor of the place. He found himself feeling nauseated as he moved carefully down the hallway to the staircase.
Footsteps crunched into broken glass somewhere in the living room. Irregular breathing, almost wheezing, could be heard against the whistling sound of the wind.
Reaching the stairs, Clark put one hand on the banister for support and with the other raised his service revolver, ready for whatever lay ahead.
The entire house was a deep pool of shadows. He felt he was being submerged, perhaps even drowned, in them. One step at a time, he continued his descent to the first floor.
Creaking wood made him start. His entire body was instantly bathed in a sticky sweat. He'd had no idea how terrified he'd become.
Reaching the bottom of the steps, he began to scan the gloom, to see if he could find one thing wrong, one thing that would show him where Jenny might be.
Shapes of furniture, the fireplace, the heavy, closed drapes appeared. His stomach and bowels were doing terrible things as he pressed deeper into the room. This was not the kind of fear he liked to admit to himself. He felt impossibly young and helpless, as if at any moment he might drop his revolver and begin crying out for help.
A noise caused him to spin around, drop to one knee and aim his revolver.
Hammer back, ready to fire, he watched the alcove to the right of the dining room, and it was there that she appeared.
She was as he remembered her, an innocent-looking little girl with freckles and pigtails. Her prim blue dress touched her knees, and her white anklets and black patent leather shoes were perfectly cared for.
She moved toward him in the center of a soft blue glow. She put her hand out to him and smiled. 'You're afraid, aren't you, Robert?'
And he heard himself-as if from a great distance-saying, 'Yes, Jenny, I am.'
'There's no reason to be. You're with the forces of good now.'
'The forces of good?'
She raised her lovely eyes to the floor above them. 'You saw what the forces of evil do to people. Now you'll be with me and everything will be all right.'
'With you?' He wasn't sure what she meant. All he knew was that her voice had a peculiarly soothing effect on him, almost like a drug.
'Yes,' she said, moving even closer, 'with me.'
She put a hand out, touched his face. He still knelt on one knee. The palm of her hand was tender and warm, comforting on his cheek.
She leaned forward and put her small, damp mouth in to kiss on his forehead.
'You'll be with me now,' she said again.
And he thought of summer days and lush green foliage and clear blue mountain streams and cardinals and jays that frolicked on the soft clean air.
'With you,' he repeated. 'With you.'
Distantly, he heard the revolver fall from his hand and strike the floor.
There in the darkness, enshrined in the soft blue glow, Jenny reached forward now, to give him an even more intimate kiss, one on the mouth.
Knowing this was wrong-she was a little girl-he tried to stop her but somehow he could not.
Feeling her tiny, wriggling tongue inside his mouth, he tried once again to push her away.
'Jenny, no,' he said.
The cackle was unlike anything he had ever heard. And there could be no doubt from where it came.
Before his face, innocent little Jenny became the ugliest, bent hag he had ever seen. He thought of the mad women panhandlers of the large cities-this twisted crone was a hundred times uglier.
'You shouldn't play with little girls.' The witch laughed, and then raked her long nails across his face, scoring it.
Hot blood and almost unbearable pain spread across his cheeks as he fell to the floor, cupping his hands over his face to slow the bleeding.
His scream followed her up the stairs, up into the even deeper shadows, where the McCay's waited to die.
It could have been no longer than a minute before their screams started, covering his entirely.
Several times, he tried to get to his feet, but each attempt ended with his falling back to the floor.
He was losing blood so quickly that his strength was leaving him. Terror, confusion, and a distant sense of shame also took their toll. He almost prayed for unconsciousness…
He was not certain when the front door was hurled open. All he knew was that the last thing he saw when he rose up once more on his bloody hands…was the sight of Diane.
She stood in the doorway shouting, 'Jenny! Jenny!' Over and over, almost as if she was transfixed.
