Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror (29 page)

But then finally his exaltation faded. “Nothing’s happening,” he complained. “They should be coming.”

“Nothing came out when I opened the door before,” Lauren interjected.

He looked at her unbelievingly. “You opened the door before?”

She became frightened all over again for what she had done. “Y-yes,” she stuttered.

“And nothing came out then either?”

She shook her head.

“Maybe we need the Watcher to help us after all,” Fugate offered. “Maybe it knows how to release them.”

The wind continued to whistle. “Maybe,” he said. “But I don’t want to risk it. At least, not yet.”

Fugate frowned. “Then what are we going to do in the meantime?”

“We’re going to have to find out what’s keeping our friends from coming out.”

“But how?”

“Someone’s going to have to go in there.”

An uneasy silence fell over the room as the Master surveyed their faces.

“You,” he said to Lauren, and her face turned to chalk. “But how am I going to go in there? It’s nothing but empty space.”

“There’s a staircase.”

“I didn’t see a staircase.”

“Believe me. I can see in the darkness much better than you can. There’s a drop of about ten feet to reach it, but it’s there.”

The thought of entering the seemingly endless darkness made her half-crazed with fear. “No, I can’t, really.
Please
“You must, Mrs. Ransom. There’s no other way. And besides, if you don’t...” He glanced at Garrett.

Her heart sank, but she knew she had no choice. She crept up to the threshold of the doorway and aimed her flashlight down. To her surprise she saw that there was a staircase, an ancient staircase made of stone, and as she traced the beam of the flashlight over it she saw that it seemed to descend forever into the gloom.

Her knees started to weaken underneath her, but before she knew what was happening the Master picked her up by the arms and with superhuman strength lowered her into the darkness.

About four feet down she hit the surface of the stone. “Mom!” she heard Garrett call overhead.

She froze, afraid to move even so much as an inch in the total darkness, and then suddenly she realized that when he had grabbed her she had dropped the flashlight on the floor of the hallway.

“Please, give me the flashlight!” she said to the Master. He held the flashlight out through the open rectangle above her, and she grabbed it with both hands. Then she quickly shined it around her feet to get a better grasp of her surroundings.

The landing she was standing on was about fifteen feet square, and like the stone of the door’s threshold it was scuffed and pitted. The steps themselves were extremely wide, but because there were no railings on either side, their steepness made her head swim, and for a moment she thought she was going to faint. Positioning herself as squarely in the middle of the staircase as possible, she inched her way toward the first step.

“Go on!” the Master ordered. “You’re going to have to move faster than that if you expect to make any progress.”

She looked up and saw that to goad her on he had brought Garrett up to the doorway and was making him standing dangerously close to the edge.

Breathing deeply, she started down the steps.

Occasionally as she descended she crept to within a foot or two of the edge of the stairs and pointed the flashlight into the Stygian darkness. But invariably she saw what appeared to be a limitless drop.

On and on she went, and the farther she traveled the stronger the wind became. Five minutes passed, and then ten, until she noticed that the doorway had dwindled into a point of light and vanished. Still she pressed on.

As she advanced, the air became colder, icier, and acquired an odd wintery smell. Even stranger, the darkness started to become brighter. At first the difference was so subtle it was almost imperceptible, but slowly the gloom became suffused with a faint twilight glow.

Finally, as the unearthly twilight became brighter, she realized with a jolt she had only about a hundred steps to go. Even more startling, in the bluish half-light that now pervaded everything she saw that she was once again approaching solid ground.

But it was not familiar ground. Spreading out in all directions from the base of the stairs was a vast and seemingly endless frozen waste. In appearance, it might have been a scene from the Arctic, save that the slabs and escarpments of ice that covered it were far too smooth and regular to have been carved by natural forces. From the helter-skelter way they were piled against one another it was clear that at some point in the distant past they had been formed by some enormous and violent upheaval. But whatever the cataclysm had been, it was now echoed only in their shape, and they seemed more like tombstones, funerary monoliths disturbed only by the snow and the wind.

As she stared at the alien landscape spreading out before her she realized something else. The strange, almost lunar terrain was also the source of the faint but vast pulsation of life she had sensed when she had first opened the doorway. Despite its barren appearance, there was something alive in this godforsaken netherworld.

Frightened, she turned to leave, but as soon as she started up the stairs, she heard a voice.

“Not yet, Mrs. Ransom. I must see more.”

It was the Master, and she swung around, trying to figure out how he had accompanied her without her knowledge.

But then she realized with horror that she had not heard him with her ears, but with her mind itself. His voice had come from inside her head.

“No!” she screamed, cupping her hands over her ears, but as soon as she resisted, her head was racked with pain.

“Stop!” the Master shouted, and the words echoed in the background of her thoughts. “Stop resisting me and it won’t hurt.”

But the realization that he had entrenched himself in her mind made her feel more violated than she had ever felt in her life.

Like something reptilian and primeval she felt him wriggling around inside her thoughts, felt the tendrils of his influence struggling madly to access her senses.

She resisted, and the searing pain intensified.

Fearing she was going to black out and fall and hurt herself, she gave in.

“There,” the Master said, sighing mentally. “Now continue until you’ve reached the bottom of the stairs. I must see more.”

Reluctantly, she turned around, and as she descended into the midst of the icy monoliths, the feeling that she was drawing close to something alive increased. Indeed, by the time she reached the bottom of the steps, the sensation had grown so powerful that her flesh was prickling. She frantically pointed the flashlight all around her, half expecting to see some giant shape looming up next to her. But still, there was no sign of activity, and the only movement remained the occasional eddying of the snow in the wind.

“
Keep going
,” the Master prodded.

Realizing she had no choice, she crept forward. By now, the prickling of her flesh had become very powerful, and she realized that whatever the legion of things were that inhabited the place, they were close, very close. But it wasn’t until she shined the flashlight on the face of one of the slabs of ice that she saw. Entombed beneath its surface, and frozen in various bizarre and tormented postures, was a phantasmagoria of the most grotesque creatures she had ever seen. Griffins, harpies, monkeylike demons, and fierce winged dogs. Basilisks, devils of all shapes and sizes with taloned hands and huge leathery wings, flying serpents, and dwarfs with gigantic blood-red eyes.

As she moved the flashlight quickly from one block of ice to the next she saw that each seemed to contain more creatures than the last. Some, like the numerous devils, were recognizable to her. But others were so ghastly and foreign that she gasped: strange ogreish creatures with shapeless lumps of flesh for faces, gauzy sylphlike beings with hollow sunken eyes, imps no larger than mice, things that looked burned and faceless save for their razor-sharp teeth, locusts wearing what looked like little suits of armor, and hordes of other insectlike creatures that distantly resembled houseflies, wasps, and bees, but possessed additional horrific features which clearly betrayed their demonic nature.

The monstrous appearance of the creatures terrified Lauren, but what frightened her all the more was how mysteriously familiar they all seemed. It was as if some unconscious, ancient, and perhaps even prehuman part of her recognized them, recognized what they had represented to her genetic forebears, and although she did not know them consciously, their appearance still tugged at her, still plucked at some deep and primordial part of her being.

Suddenly, and to her great astonishment, her terror became mingled with joy. For a moment she was baffled, wondering why she was experiencing such an inappropriate response. But then she realized. It was not her joy, but
his.
She was feeling the Master’s elation.

“All right,” he told her telepathically, “I’ve seen enough. You can come back.”

She spun around and started up the stairs, and as soon as she did it seemed to her she could almost hear the keening of the things in the ice reaching out to her, trying to call her back. With each passing step, the siren song grew more desperate and beckoning. And its meaning was clear. Despite their dormant appearance, the things wanted out. They did not want her to leave.

It taxed her endurance to the limit, but she did not stop running until she reached the top landing. When she did the Master hauled her up the last few feet and she collapsed on the floor in exhaustion.

“Mom!” Garrett cried, rushing over to comfort her.

But the Master ignored her, and just continued to stare into the darkness.

“So I was right!” he exclaimed.

“But if they’re frozen in ice, how are we going to get them out?” Fugate asked. “Build a fire?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the Master said, looking at him as if it were the stupidest thing he had ever heard. “We would never be able to cart enough wood down there to melt all that ice.” He returned his attention to the darkness. “No. It was magic that put them there. And it will be magic that will set them free.”

Realizing another display of the Master’s power was in the offing, Fugate placed the palms of his hands together excitedly and stepped back to watch.

The Master closed his eyes and took several long deep breaths. Then he raised his arms wide like a king addressing his subjects and began to chant: “
Ayperos naberrs adiram glassyalabolas. Chameron hayras ador cabuvodium.
” As he intoned the words a breeze began to rustle through the hallway and the house creaked.

“
Lhavala casmiel beldor forneus. Asmoday octinimoes abravor tahr

As soon as he finished the incantation a great rushing of air swept past them, and Lauren held on to Garrett tightly. Like an invisible locomotive the magical wind roared down the stairs, and as it collided with the various winds and air currents it met in the darkness it made a strange thrashing sound like a piece of canvas flapping in a storm.

Lauren froze as the Master flexed his fingers and gazed excitedly into the darkness, waiting for the sound of his brethren being released.

But instead there was only silence.

“So what’s happening?” Fugate asked nervously.

“I don’t know!” the Master snapped, peeved that his magic had not seemed to work.

“But you said you had the power to—”

“I do!” the Master cut him off. “It’s just going to take a little experimenting. I’ve just got to find the right way.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe something that’s a little older, a Babylonian spell...”

He once again raised his hands up toward the darkness. “
Nabu apla il apna sha. Ik iddina shaki shalu. Nabu apla il apna mardok. Shabu ish, ishali shak, sha ik ik kali sharri.
” As soon as he finished the words there was a brilliant flash of blue light, followed by a piercing whistling sound.

But again, after the first flourish of the spell subsided, nothing seemed to happen.

Fugate became even more distressed. “What are we going to do?” he whined.

“Shut up!” the Master snarled, beginning to lose his temper. “There’s got to be some incantation that will work. If they were placed there by magic, then magic can release them. I know there’s an incantation. I can feel it in my bones.”

“But you’ve already tried twice. Don’t you think it’s time we try asking the Watcher for help?”

The Master looked at him with thinly veiled fury. “I told you, I don’t want to risk releasing the Watcher unless we know a little more about why it is here. We still don’t know whether it was placed here to help us or to stop us, and unless we can figure that out, I just don’t want to risk it. Besides, I know I have the power to do this. I know I do.”

The Master turned back toward the doorway and once again began to marshal his concentration, but Fugate remained unappeased. He continued to wring his hands together and hop about nervously at the Master’s side.

“But what if you—”

“Will you just
shut up!
” the Master shouted as he backhanded Fugate and sent him hurling against the wall. Outraged, Fugate charged back at him, swinging the straight razor in wild erratic arcs, but with preterhuman speed, the Master grabbed his wrist and violently flung him back again. This time Fugate fell, and when he did he crashed into the silver tray, sending it rolling straight toward Garrett.

The tray hit Garrett’s feet and stopped, and for several seconds everyone froze. As Garrett stared down at the tray, he understood all too well what it meant to have it fall into his hands, and he realized he was faced with yet another situation in which he had to decide whether to trust or not to trust.

Should he quickly wipe the symbols off, and thus release the Watcher Angel?

Or would such a move only help the Master and make their own situation worse?

Realizing he had only a fraction of a second to decide, he quickly turned everything he knew about the Watcher over in his mind. But still he could find no firm answer, no slight preponderance of fact to indicate which of the two choices was the right one to make.