Part 28 (1/2)

”...time to murder...time to murder...”

Molly could not determine whether this was a threat or a command meant to mesmerize by repet.i.tion-or something else entirely.

She told herself that she should ignore this compelling dark chorus. Instead, curiosity drew her nearer to the wall of the landing.

Under the cultivating beam of the flashlight, roses bloomed in the wallpaper, mostly yellow, some pink, thornless, leafy.

She slid one hand across the paper roses, not sure what she expected to feel. Maybe a swelling in the plaster. Evidence of structural deformities.

The wall was flat, dry, and solid. A faint vibration tingled across her palm, nothing more.

”...time to murder...time to murder...”

Among the voices in English, she thought that she detected others speaking a different language.

She leaned her head against the wall, one ear to the yellow roses.

A faint but disturbing smell came from that printed rosarium-perhaps chemicals in the paper or in the paste beneath.

When she focused her attention on the voices in foreign tongues, they clarified as though aware that she had a particular interest in them. She heard the same three-word phrase in French and Spanish. Insistent voices chanted in what might have been Russian, j.a.panese, Chinese, German, Swedish, and others in languages that she could not hope to identify.

Then the rhythm broke. The metered waves of sound collapsed into a wordless rush of thousands upon thousands of crisp little noises, the pitapatation and swish, the tick and buzz, of a busy nest.

Trying to divine by sound alone what kind of pestilence swarmed behind the plaster, she kept one ear to the wall a moment longer-until a lone voice whispered out of that soft tumult of flutter and squirm: ”Molly.” ”Molly.”

Startled, she pushed away from the wall.

Tread by tread, the flashlight beam played down the stairs, then riser by riser upward to where the dog waited above, and found no one who could have said her name.

Planetary apocalypse suddenly had become unnervingly personal. Something of unearthly origin, crawling inside the walls to unknown purpose, had spoken her name with a creepy intimacy, filling her with revulsion.

And again, in a needful, yearning tone: ”Molly.” ”Molly.”

54.

EYES RADIANT AND FAMILIAR IN SHADOW, flaring and strange in the flashlight, Virgil greeted Molly at the head of the stairs, not with a wag of his tail but with an urgent whine, and led her directly to the only one of five doors that was closed.

In that room, a child cried faintly, perhaps a boy, sobbing not as though in immediate jeopardy but as though he had been worn down by long endurance of terror.

She tried the door with the same hand that held the flashlight. The k.n.o.b would not turn.

For a moment, she waited for the door to open at the command of the dog or whatever presence had let them in downstairs, but it remained closed.

Reluctant to pocket the pistol, she put the flashlight on the floor instead, and tried the door again with her free hand. Locked.

She called out to the weeping child, ”Honey, we're here to help you. You're not alone anymore. We'll get you out of there.”

As if her words had been an incantation, the door abruptly swung inward, revealing darkness complete, the blackness of a hungry maw.

Out of the walls and ceiling came her name, whispered with a ravenous eagerness: ”Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly...” ”Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly...”

She spooked backward a step.

Undaunted, Virgil dashed past her and into the room.

The door crashed shut.

She tried the k.n.o.b, knowing that it wouldn't turn, and it didn't.

Stooping, she retrieved the flashlight from the floor. Rising, she detected movement in the hall, something closing fast from her right side.

He body-slammed her: a man not as big as Neil, but big enough. Hit hard, she fumbled the flashlight, dropped the gun, and went down.

Falling atop her, driving the breath out of her, he said, ”You ain't gettin' them. They're my sacrifices.”

The flashlight lay mere inches to their left, revealing him. Close-cropped red hair. A sensuous face-heavily lidded turquoise eyes, full lips. A cord of keloidal scar tissue tied his left ear to the corner of his mouth, souvenir of a long-ago knife fight.

”The little lambs are mine,” he said, his breath a stench-the sourness of beer, the sharpness of garlic, the wretched pungency of rotted teeth.

He c.o.c.ked a fist the size of a three-pound canned ham and drove it at her face.

She turned her head. His punch mostly missed her, his thumb knuckle cracked the cartilage in her left ear, and he struck the carpeted floor.

They both cried out with pain, and she knew that she wouldn't be able to dodge another blow. He would smash her nose, her cheekbones, and batter her to death.

He was half again her size, and she could not push him off, so before he could strike again, she raised her head off the floor and bit his face. Would have gone for his throat. Couldn't thrust her head in at the right angle, had to go higher. Lower teeth under his jawbone, upper teeth sunk in his unscarred cheek.

He howled and reared back from her, and she held on as if she were a terrier. He flailed on her shoulders, on the sides of her head, glancing blows, thrown in panic, and Molly wouldn't relent.

He reared up farther, just far enough, and she unlocked her bite, spat him out, shoved him off, levered him aside, thrashed away from him.

The savage, shocked by savagery when it was committed against him, rolled onto his side, and clasped both hands to his torn face, a.s.sessing the damage with whimpered disbelief.

Spitting out his blood, gagging on the taste, spitting again, and then again before she would allow herself to gasp for breath, Molly seized the flashlight, scrambled to her feet.

She had seconds, three or four. His shock would be brief, his rage swift, his vengeance brutal.

Lambs, he had said. he had said. The little lambs are mine. The little lambs are mine. Mustbe more than one child in the room where Virgil had gone. Mustbe more than one child in the room where Virgil had gone. Sacrifices, Sacrifices, he had said. he had said.

Phantom bells rang in her damaged ear, and the half-crushed cartilage p.r.i.c.kled like gla.s.s.