VIII.

Faye opened the door, saw Jack's revolver, gave him a startled look, and said, "My G.o.d, what's that for? What're you doing? You know how I hate guns. Put that thing away."

From Faye's demeanor as she stepped back to let them in, Jack knew the kids were all right, and he sagged a little with relief. But he said, "Where's Penny? Where's Davey? Are they okay?"

Faye glanced at Rebecca and started to smile, then realized what Jack was saying, frowned at him, and said, "Okay? Well, of course, they're okay. They're perfectly fine. I might not have kids of my own, but I know how to take care of them. You think I'd let anything happen to those two little monkeys? For heaven's sake, Jack, I don't-"

"Did anyone try to follow you back here from the school?" he asked urgently.

"And just what was all that nonsense about, anyway?" Faye demanded.

"It wasn't nonsense. I thought I made that clear. Did anyone try to follow you? You did did look out for a tail, like I told you to-didn't you, Faye?" look out for a tail, like I told you to-didn't you, Faye?"

"Sure, sure, sure. I looked. No one tried to follow me. And I don't think-"

They had moved out of the foyer, into the living room, while they had been talking. Jack looked around, didn't see the kids.

He said, "Faye, where the h.e.l.l are they?"

"Don't take that tone, for goodness sake. What are you- "

"Faye, d.a.m.nit!"

She recoiled from him. "They're in the guest room. With Keith," she said quickly and irritably. "They were put to bed at about a quarter past nine, just as they should have been, and we thought they were just about sound asleep when all of a sudden Penny screamed-"

"Screamed?"

"-and said there were rats in their room. Well, of course, we don't have any-"

Rats!

Jack bolted across the living room, hurried along the short hall, and burst into the guest room.

The bedside lamps, the standing lamp in the corner and the ceiling light were all blazing.

Penny and Davey were standing at the foot of one of the twin beds, still in their pajamas. When they saw Jack, they cried out happily- "Daddy! Daddy!"-and ran to him, hugged him.

Jack was so overwhelmed at finding them alive and unhurt, so grateful, that for a moment he couldn't speak. He just grabbed hold of them and held them very tightly.

In spite of all the lights in the room, Keith Jamison was holding a flashlight. He was over by the dresser holding the flash above his head, directing the beam into the darkness beyond the vent plate that covered the outlet in the heating duct. He turned to Jack, frowning, and said, "Something odd's going on here. I-"

"Goblins!" Penny said, clutching Jack. "They're coming, Daddy, they want me and Davey, don't let them, don't let them get us, oh please, I've been waiting for them, waiting and waiting, scared, and now they're almost here!" The words tumbled over one another, flooding out of her, and then she sobbed.

"Whoa," Jack said, holding her close and petting her, smoothing her hair. "Easy now. Easy."

Faye and Rebecca had followed him from the living room.

Rebecca was being her usual cool, efficient self. She was at the bedroom closet, getting the kids' clothes off hangers.

Faye said, "First, Penny shouted that there were rats in her room; and then she started carrying on about goblins, nearly hysterical. I tried to tell her it was only a nightmare-"

"It wasn't wasn't a nightmare!" Penny shouted. a nightmare!" Penny shouted.

"Of course it was," Faye said.

"They've been watching me all day," Penny said. "And there was one of them in our room last night, Daddy. And in the school bas.e.m.e.nt today-a whole bunch of them. They chewed up Davey's lunch. And my books, too. I don't know what they want, but they're after us, and they're goblins, real goblins, I swear!"

"Okay," Jack said. "I want to hear all of this, every detail. But later. Now, we have to get out of here."

Rebecca brought their clothes.

Jack said, "Get dressed. Don't bother taking off your pajamas. Just put your clothes on over them."

Faye said, "What on earth-"

"We've got to get the kids out of here," Jack said. "Fast."

"But you act as if you actually believe this goblin talk," Faye said, astonished.

Keith said, "I sure don't believe in goblins, but I sure do do believe we have some rats." believe we have some rats."

"No, no, no," Faye said, scandalized. "We can't. Not in this this building." building."

"In the ventilation system," Keith said. "I heard them myself. That's why I was trying to see in there with the flashlight when you came busting in, Jack."

"Sssshhh," Rebecca said. "Listen."

The kids continued to get dressed, but no one spoke.

At first Jack heard nothing. Then* a peculiar hissing-muttering- growling.

That's no d.a.m.ned rat, he thought.

Inside the wall, something rattled. Then a scratching sound, a furious scrabbling. Industrious noises: clinking, tapping, sc.r.a.ping, thumping.

Faye said, "My G.o.d."

Jack took the flashlight from Keith, went to the dresser, pointed the light at the duct. The beam was bright and tightly focused, but it did little to dispel the blackness that pooled beyond the slots in the vent plate.

Another thump in the wall.

More hissing and muted growling.

Jack felt a p.r.i.c.kling along the back of his neck.

Then, incredibly, a voice came out of the duct. It was a hoa.r.s.e, crackling, utterly inhuman voice, thick with menace: "Penny? Davey? Penny?" "Penny? Davey? Penny?"

Faye cried out and stumbled back a couple of steps.

Even Keith, who was a big and rather formidable man, went pale and moved away from the vent. "What the devil was that? that?"

To Faye, Jack said, "Where're the kids' coats and boots? Their gloves?"

"Uh* in* in the kitchen. D-Drying out."

"Get them."

Faye nodded but didn't move.

Jack put a hand on her shoulder. "Get their coats and boots and gloves, then meet us by the front door."

She couldn't take her eyes off the vent.

He shook her. "Faye! Hurry!"

She jumped as if he'd slapped her face, turned, and ran out of the bedroom.

Penny was almost dressed, and she was holding up remarkably well, scared but in control. Davey was sitting on the edge of the bed, trying not to cry, crying anyway, wiping at the tears on his face, glancing apologetically at Penny and biting his lip and trying very hard to follow her example; his legs were dangling over the side of the bed, and Rebecca was hastily tying his shoes for him.

From the vent: "Davey? Penny?" "Davey? Penny?"

"Jack, for Christ's sake, what's going on here?"

Keith asked.

Not bothering to respond, having no time or patience for questions and answers just now, Jack pointed the flashlight at the vent again and glimpsed movement in the duct. Something silvery lay in there; it glowed and flickered like a white-hot fire-then blinked and was gone. In its place, something dark appeared, shifted, pushed against the vent plate for a moment, as if trying hard to dislodge it, then withdrew when the plate held. Jack couldn't see enough of the creature to get a clear idea of its general appearance.

Keith said, "Jack. The vent screw."

Jack had already seen it. The screw was revolving, slowly coming out of the edge of the vent plate. The creature inside the duct was turning the screw, unfastening it from the other side of the f.l.a.n.g.e to which the plate was attached. The thing was muttering, hissing, and grumbling softly while it worked.

"Let's go," Jack said, striving to keep his voice calm. "Come on, come on. Let's get out of here right now."

The screw popped loose. The vent plate swung down, away from the ventilation outlet, hanging from the one remaining screw.

Rebecca hustled the kids toward the door.

A nightmare crawled out of the duct. It hung there on the wall, with utter disregard for gravity, as if there were suction pads on its feet, although it didn't seem equipped with anything of that sort.

"Jesus," Keith said, stunned.

Jack shuddered at the thought of this repulsive little beast touching Davey or Penny.

The creature was the size of a rat. In shape, at least, its body was rather like that of a rat, too: low-slung, long in the flanks, with shoulders and haunches that were large and muscular for an animal of its size. But there the resemblance to a rat ended, and the nightmare began. This thing was hairless. Its slippery skin was darkly mottled gray-green-yellow and looked more like a slimy fungus than like flesh. The tail was not at all similar to a rat's tail; it was eight or ten inches long, an inch wide at the base, segmented in the manner of a scorpion's tail, tapering and curling up into the air above the beast's hindquarters, like that of a scorpion, although it wasn't equipped with a stinger. The feet were far different from a rat's feet: They were oversize by comparison to the animal itself; the long toes were triple-jointed, gnarly; the curving claws were much too big for the feet to which they were fitted; a razor-sharp, multiply-barbed spur curved out from each heel. The head was even more deadly in appearance and design than were the feet; it was formed over a flattish skull that had many unnaturally sharp angles, unnecessary convexities and concavities, as if it had been molded by an inexpert sculptor. The snout was long and pointed, a bizarre cross between the muzzle of a wolf and that of a crocodile. The small monster opened its mouth and hissed, revealing too many pointed teeth that were angled in various directions along its jaws. A surprisingly long black tongue slithered out of the mouth, glistening like a strip of raw liver; the end of it was forked, and it fluttered continuously.

But the thing's eyes were what frightened Jack the most. They appeared not to be eyes at all; they had no pupils or irises, no solid tissue that he could discern. There were just empty sockets in the creature's malformed skull, crude holes from which radiated a harsh, cold, brilliant light. The intense glow seemed to come from a fire within the beast's own mutant cranium. Which simply could not be be. Yet was. And the thing wasn't blind, either, as it should have been; there wasn't any question about its ability to see, for it fixed those fire-filled "eyes" on Jack, and he could feel its demonic gaze as surely as he would have felt a knife rammed into his gut. That was the other thing that disturbed him, the very worst aspect of those mad eyes: the death- cold, hate-hot, soul-withering feeling they imparted when you dared to meet them. Looking into the thing's eyes, Jack felt both physically and spiritually ill.

With insectile disregard for gravity, the beast slowly crept head- first down the wall, away from the duct.

A second creature appeared at the opening in the ventilation system. This one wasn't anything like the first. It was in the form of a small man, perhaps ten inches high, crouching up there in the mouth of the duct. Although it possessed the crude form of a man, it was in no other way humanlike. Its hands and feet resembled those of the first beast, with dangerous claws and barbed spurs. The flesh was funguslike, slippery looking, though less green, more yellow and gray. There were black circles around the eyes and patches of corrupted-looking black flesh fanning out from the nostrils. Its head was misshapen, with a toothy mouth that went from ear to ear. And it had those same h.e.l.lish eyes, although they were smaller than the eyes in the ratlike thing.

Jack saw that the man-form beast was holding a weapon. It looked like a miniature spear. The point was well-honed; it caught the light and glinted along its cutting edge.

Jack remembered the first two victims of Lavelle's crusade against the Carramazza family. They had both been stabbed hundreds of times with a weapon no bigger than a penknife-yet not a penknife. The medical examiner had been perplexed; the lab technicians had been baffled. But, of course, it wouldn't have occurred to them to explore the possibility that those homicides were the work of ten- inch voodoo devils and that the murder weapons were miniature spears.

Voodoo devils? Goblins? Gremlins? What exactly were these things?

Did Lavelle mold them from clay and then somehow invest them with life and malevolent purpose?

Or were they conjured up with the help of pentagrams and sacrifices and arcane chants, the way demons were supposedly called forth by Satanists? Were Were they demons? they demons?

Where did they come from?

The man-form thing didn't creep down the wall behind the first beast. Instead, it leaped out of the duct, dropping to the top of the dresser, landing on its feet, agile and quick.

It looked past Jack and Keith, and it said, "Penny? Davey?" "Penny? Davey?"

Jack pushed Keith across the threshold, into the hall, then followed him and pulled the door shut behind them.

An instant later, one of the creatures-probably the manlike beast- crashed against the other side of the door and began to claw frantically at it.

The kids were already out of the hall, in the living room.

Jack and Keith hurried after them.

Faye shouted, "Jack! Quick! They're coming through the vent out here!"

"Trying to cut us off," Jack said.

Jesus, we're not going to make it, they're everywhere, the d.a.m.ned building's infested with them, they're all around us- In his mind, Jack quickly slammed the door on those bleak thoughts, closed it tight and locked it and told himself that their worst enemies were their own pessimism and fear, which could enervate and immobilize them.

Just this side of the foyer, in the living room, Faye and Rebecca were helping the kids put on coats and boots.

Snarling, hissing, and eager wordless jabbering issued from the vent plate in the wall above the long sofa. Beyond the slots in that grille, silver eyes blazed in the darkness. One of the screws was being worked loose from inside.

Davey had only one boot on, but time had run out.

Jack picked up the boy and said, "Faye, bring his other boot, and let's get moving."

Keith was already in the foyer. He'd been to the closet and had gotten coats for himself and Faye. Without pausing to put them on, he grabbed Faye by the arm and hurried her out of the apartment.

Penny screamed.

Jack turned toward the living room, instinctively crouching slightly and holding Davey even tighter.

The vent plate was off the duct above the sofa. Something was starting to come out of the darkness there.

But that wasn't why Penny had screamed. Another hideous intruder had come out of the kitchen, and that was what had seized her attention. It was two-thirds of the way through the dining room, scurrying toward the living room archway, coming straight at them. Its coloration was different from that of the other beasts, although no less disgusting; it was a sickly yellow-white with cancerous- looking green-black pockmarks all over it, and like the other beasts Lavelle had sent, this one appeared to be slick, slimy. It was also a lot bigger than any of the others, almost three times the size of the ratlike creature in the bedroom. Somewhat resembling an iguana, although more slender through its body than an iguana, this sp.a.w.n of nightmares was three to four feet in length, had a lizard's tail, a lizard's head and face. Unlike an iguana, however, the small monster had eyes of fire, six legs, and a body so slinky that it appeared capable of tying itself in knots; it was the very slinkiness and flexibility that made it possible for a creature of this size to slither through the ventilation pipes. Furthermore, it had a pair of batlike wings which were atrophied and surely useless but which unfurled and flapped and fluttered with frightening effect.