Gremlins (25 page)

“It’s probably Gremlins,” Kate replied.

“That’s really what you think?” Dorry asked, wide-eyed. He had always regarded Kate as a particularly down-to-earth person, incapable of believing in Santa Claus, evil spirits, or other supernatural beings.

“That’s what the guy on the radio thinks it is,” she said simply.

Dorry wondered exactly what had won her over. True, the radio had described incidents involving apparently driverless cars, and more than a few callers had mentioned seeing the little green monsters in the Kingston Falls area.

But wasn’t it possible that mass hysteria, fed by the constant radio reports, was taking over? Didn’t anyone remember Orson Welles’s famous “War of the Worlds” episode before World War II? Dorry didn’t actually remember it himself, not having been born yet, but he had read about the panic that had gripped the nation then. Now, hearing Kate’s profession of belief in Gremlins, he better understood America’s abject fear of 1938; if a reasonable young woman such as Kate Beringer could be convinced that little green monsters existed, anyone could.

He was about to pursue the topic further with her when he noticed the vanguard of their battalion standing near the front door. Although Dorry did not realize it, his pub, with its very subdued indirect lighting, was a magnet for the Gremlins, an ideal spot for them to relax after their early-evening knaveries. Darting out of the shadows bordering the main square, they gravitated naturally to this wondrous arena of free food, drink, games, and music.

A person’s jaw dropping—even several jaws dropping in concert—is not generally considered a measurable sound. Tonight, as Dorry and his few customers one by one noticed the collection of forms moving slowly through the foyer toward them, their jaws dropping seemed to generate a negative force so powerful and complete, not unlike a black hole in space, that it could be felt and heard as clearly as any explosion.

The brief moment of paralysis and terrifying silence was immediately followed by a detonation of people, Dorry included, toward the side and rear exits. Chairs fell, drinks were dropped or spilled, and bodies stumbled as the Gremlins took over the bar as rapidly and thoroughly as if an opening night theatre next door had just discharged its patrons. Chattering to each other in broken Mogwai, hopping excitedly as they spotted the game machines and pool table, the Gremlins inundated Dorry’s Pub in less than a minute.

Dorry was the last person to escape via the rear entrance. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw a confused and surrounded Kate hesitate and then retreat behind the bar as the sea of green cackling faces spread in unearthly agitated waves from one corner of his establishment to the other.

—a state of emergency at the Governor’s Mall Shopping Plaza ever since the electronic doors jammed, trapping some hundred and fifty people inside the complex. The telephones are still working, however, although one by one the lines are being taken out of service by the same unseen forces that have been terrorizing Kingston Falls since shortly before eight o’clock this evening.

At last reports, eyewitnesses stated that chaos broke out in the mall when the escalators started moving at terrific speeds, perhaps as fast as seventy or eighty miles an hour. Passengers were spun off like tops and hurled through plate glass windows or into each other. This was followed by all the lights being turned off and the background music being turned up to a deafening volume. We’ll keep you posted on the situation at Governor’s Mall, as we know many of you in our listening audience have loved ones or friends in that facility. We repeat that so far there have been no fatalities although many have been injured.

Elsewhere in the area, two more people have been attacked by Christmas trees—

Swallowing the last morsel of her Dinty Moore Beef Stew—one large can of which lasted her three days—Mrs. Deagle sat back to await the start of her favorite nighttime soap opera on television, the one with so many despicable characters, whom she found singularly attractive.

Once again the doorbell’s ringing disrupted her pleasure. Even more aggravating was the persistence of the callers, one of whom kept his finger against the button so that the chimes continued to sound endlessly.

“Fools!” Mrs. Deagle hissed, struggling to her feet. “I’ll have them arrested.”

Flinging the door open, she nearly choked on the angry words she had prepared for the unwanted callers. She gasped. For how could one even begin to preach responsibility and common sense to a group outfitted such as this one? Were they a joke cooked up by the angry carolers?

“What is this?” she finally managed to growl. “A late Halloween prank? Well, I’ll thank you to get off my porch and lawn this minute or I’m calling the police!”

The group, apparently oblivious to her attitude, began a singsong mumbo jumbo that was totally incomprehensible to Mrs. Deagle.

“Get out of here!” she shouted. “I don’t want to hear you and I don’t want to see you. Those costumes are terrible, anyway. Very cheap and tacky and unconvincing.”

The giggly dirge continued. Leaving the front door open, Mrs. Deagle went inside and looked around for something to throw. As she did so, two of the creatures padded into the house and faded into the darkness.

A moment later Mrs. Deagle returned holding a broom. While inside she had considered dousing them with a bucket of water, but her arms weren’t strong enough to lift a full bucket much less throw it.

“All right,” she grated, moving toward the unwanted visitors, “now scram or else.”

When the Gremlins continued singing, she lifted the broom and began thrashing left and right. More surprised than hurt, the creatures tumbled off the porch onto the snow, quickly hopping to their feet to snarl defiantly at her.

The exertion had caused Mrs. Deagle’s heart to start pounding, and the night air was cold. An urge to return to the comparative warmth of her living room gripped her, but she took one final moment to glare them down before turning away.

“And don’t come back,” she snarled, going back inside. The chill had worked on her bladder and she felt an urge to go upstairs to the bathroom.

“Miserable little creeps,” she muttered, seating herself on the electric stairs climber and turning the switch to
UP
. As she was in the process of doing this, one of the Gremlins watched with increasing fascination; meanwhile, in the kitchen, its partner took the opportunity to grab a late snack by stealing some of the cats’ food. A huge tabby, not liking this, hissed and took a swipe at the Gremlin’s leg. He received a quick kick that sent him half sailing, half sliding across the kitchen floor.

“What’s that commotion?” Mrs. Deagle whined. Putting the machine in neutral, she climbed down and started for the kitchen, grumbling as she stumbled along. Arriving at the swinging door of the room, she pushed it open to see a half dozen cats standing with tails upraised and fur as straight as a poker, their wide eyes fixed on the door leading into the dining room.

“What is it?” Mrs. Deagle demanded. “I swear, sometimes you stupid animals are more trouble than you’re worth.”

It took her a while to clean up the spilled food, calm down the cats with some milk, and make a perfunctory search of the dining room for them. She saw nothing. While she did these things, the Gremlin at the stairway had a wonderful time with the old woman’s elevator chair, twisting wires and changing leads almost as if it were a born electronics expert.

Finally, the troubles apparently over, Mrs. Deagle sighed wearily and returned to her original problem, that of going to the bathroom.

“At last,” she wheezed, “a chance to relax.”

As she spoke, she disengaged the chair from neutral and pushed the switch back to
UP
.

—body was identified by his wife as that of Murray Futterman, a professional handyman and mechanic who was born in Kingston Falls and lived here all his life except for a brief stint in World War Two. How Mr. Futterman was literally pushed through the wall of his garage by the snowplow is not known. The machine was still running when his body was discovered beneath it.

Another unusual accident occurred not far away at the home of Mrs. Ruby Deagle, wife of the late real estate millionaire Donald Deagle. Mrs. Deagle, who used a stair-climbing device because of a bad heart, was found dead in that chair only minutes ago. The unusual thing was that the chair and Mrs. Deagle were not in her home but in a vacant lot a tenth of a mile north of her Decatur Drive residence. The police officer who examined the circumstances of the case said that the chair apparently had gone completely haywire, carrying the woman up the stairs, through a window in the hallway, and onto the vacant lot. To have achieved such a trajectory and distance, the officer estimated that the chair must have been going at least two hundred miles an hour.

This just in—a report that the green monsters have taken over an entire bar for the evening. Because of the demands placed on the Kingston Falls Police Department by the events of the past few hours, the owner of the bar known as Dorry’s Pub could not get in touch with the police, so he called this station to warn everyone to stay out of Dorry’s Pub. That’s Dorry’s Pub, 460 West Main. The owner said that all of the customers got out safely when the little people entered except one waitress.

Meanwhile, two more people fell into open manholes—

“Kate!” Billy shouted, hitting the brakes so quickly the car spun almost completely around in the road.

He was nearly home, but now he would have to go all the way back to town.

“Darn,” he muttered, “this is all my fault—”

Yes. My name’s Damian Phillips and I have a theory about all this. I have a brother who recently retired from the CIA and he says the Russians developed a robot that—

“Shut up,” Billy snapped, reaching forward to turn the car radio off. Accelerating as much as he dared to on the icy streets, he peered through the small square of clearness generously given him by the VW’s antiquated defrosting system. Like most citizens of Kingston Falls, he had been amused initially at some of the pranks committed by the Gremlins, partly because he had experienced a secret longing to see what might happen if every traffic light showed green. But that and pulling a man into a mailbox and rolling tires down a hill were far cries from the most recent mishaps engineered by the Gremlins.

“Mr. Futterman is dead,” Billy whispered. “The poor guy. I can’t believe it.”

He did believe it, though, and the corollary was painfully self-evident. If these creatures could kill Mr. Futterman and Mrs. Deagle and perhaps others, they could also kill Kate without a second thought.

His engine roaring as the wheels spun beneath him, Billy breathed a silent prayer he would make it in time.

C H A P T E R
EIGHTEEN

D
ummy, she thought, you had an opportunity to get out of this place but you blew it. It wasn’t that long a chance and making it would have involved a little shoving, but you had to act civilized and cool and sophisticated.

So now you’re a civilized, cool, and sophisticated prisoner, she mused, not going easy on the self-recriminations.

“It’s even worse than that,” she muttered under her breath as she poured another round of drinks. “It’s a new definition of perpetual motion. I’m the only waitress for the thirstiest, meanest, sloppiest bunch of drunks in the world. What a living nightmare!”

Trapped behind the long rectangular bar at Dorry’s when the torrent of green demons poured through the door and enveloped her like a snag in a stream, Kate had initially diverted the Gremlins’ attention by mixing and pouring drinks as fast as she could and passing them around. It had worked, or at least kept the unruly mob from murdering her or, as they used to say in cheap fiction, subjecting her to a fate worse than death. The problem was that there was no time to even think, much less plan a hasty and safe exit. As soon as she filled one batch of glasses, another batch of empties was plunked down in front of her by a leering, giggling, slimy-fanged customer. One consoling factor emerged as she carried out her arm-wearying ordeal: they weren’t particular. At first, Kate had mixed real cocktails—Manhattans, martinis, whiskey sours—but soon it became obvious they would drink anything. So when a bottle of bourbon ran out, she added rum of tequila or whatever was handy to the drink. One Gremlin sitting at the end of the bar even developed a taste for bitters, throwing a tantrum when Kate finally ran out.

Now, though not much more than a half hour had passed since the Gremlins had arrived, Kate was exhausted and Dorry’s Pub looked like a cross between party headquarters on election night and Omaha Beach the morning after D day. The air, smelly and sticky, was filled with flying objects—bottles, glasses, cue sticks, billiard balls, chairs, whatever was not nailed down. A raucous babble of foreign sounds, squeals, and high-pitched giggling kept the tension level dangerously high. Amid the noise, a few passed-out bodies lay on the floor, which oozed with spilled drinks, bits of food, and crushed popcorn. Kate fought back increasingly powerful urges to scream and make a sudden rush for the door, acts which she knew would call attention to her and perhaps seal her fate forever.

“Just keep calm,” she murmured over and over again. “Sooner or later there’ll be a chance to make a break. Or help will come. Or they’ll all pass out at once.”

She wasn’t sure she believed it, but it made sense to continue serving them. At least she was invisible, or visible only when they needed a drink.

As more Gremlins drifted into the pub and supplies began to run low, however, the devilish creatures became more onerous and overbearing. Although she could not understand their language, Kate noted that the typical Gremlin drunk and his human counterpart displayed the same impatience when service didn’t keep up with their needs.

Faces leered openly, no longer bothering to feign coolness. Some seemed to delight in holding her up, shouting in her ears, deliberately spilling drinks, anything to keep her from doing her job.