“It’s true.”
“Name one.”
“I actually like to listen to Barry Manilow.”
“No!”
“Oh, I know his music’s slick, too smooth, a little plastic. But it sounds good, anyway. I like it. And another thing. I don’t like Alan Alda.”
“Everyone likes Alan Alda!”
“I think he’s a phony.”
“You disgusting fiend!”
“And I like peanut butter and onion sandwiches.”
“Ach! Alan Alda wouldn't eat peanut butter and onion sandwiches.”
“But I have one great virtue that more than makes up for all of those terrible faults,” he said.
She grinned. “What's that?”
“I love you.”
This time, she didn't ask him to refrain from saying it.
She kissed him.
Her hands moved over him.
She said, “Make love to me again.”
XII
Ordinarily, no matter how late Davey was allowed to stay up, Penny was permitted one more hour than he was. Being the last to bed was her just due, by virtue of her four-year age advantage over him. She always fought valiantly and tenaciously at the first sign of any attempt to deny her this precious and inalienable right. Tonight, however, at nine o'clock, when Aunt Faye suggested that Davey brush his teeth and hit the sack, Penny feigned sleepiness and said that she, too, was ready to call it a night.
She couldn't leave Davey alone in a dark bedroom where the goblins might creep up on him. She would have to stay awake, watching over him, until their father arrived. Then she would tell Daddy all about the goblins and hope that he would at least hear her out before he sent for the men with the straitjackets.
She and Davey had come to the Jamisons' without overnight bags, but they had no difficulty getting ready for bed. Because they occasionally stayed with Faye and Keith when their father had to work late, they kept spare toothbrushes and pajamas here. And in the guest bedroom closet, there were fresh changes of clothes for them, so they wouldn't have to wear the same thing tomorrow that they'd worn today. In ten minutes, they were comfortably nestled in the twin beds, under the covers.
Aunt Faye wished them sweet dreams, turned out the light, and closed the door.
The darkness was thick, smothering.
Penny fought off an attack of claustrophobia.
Davey was silent awhile. Then: “Penny?”
“Huh?”
“You there?”
“Who do you think just said 'huh?”
“Where's Dad?”
“Working late.”
“I mean… really.”
“Really working late.”
“What if he's been hurt?”
“He hasn't.”
“What if he got shot?”
“He didn't. They'd have told us if he'd been shot. They'd probably even take us to the hospital to see him.”
“No, they wouldn't, either. They try to protect kids from bad news like that.”
“Will you stop worrying, for God's sake? Dad's all right. If he'd been shot or anything, Aunt Faye and Uncle Keith would know all about it.”
“But maybe they do know.”
“We'd know if they knew.”
“How?”
“They'd show it, even if they were trying hard not to.”
“How would they show it?”
“They'd have treated us different. They'd have acted strange.”
“They always act strange.”
“I mean strange in a different sort of way. They'd have been especially nice to us. They'd have pampered us because they'd have felt sorry for us. And do you think Aunt Faye would have criticized Daddy all evening, the way she did, if she'd known he was shot and in a hospital somewhere?
“Well… no. I guess you're right. Not even Aunt Faye would do that.”
They were silent.
Penny lay with her head propped up on the pillow, listening.
Nothing to be heard. Just the wind outside. Far off, the grumble of a snowplow.
She looked at the window, a rectangle of vague snowy luminosity.
Would the goblins come through the window?
The door?
Maybe they'd come out of a crack in the baseboard, come in the form of smoke and then solidify when they had completely seeped into the room. Vampires did that sort of thing. She'd seen it happen in an old Dracula movie.
Or maybe they'd come out of the closet.
She looked toward the darkest end of the room, where the closet was. She couldn't see it; only blackness.
Maybe there was a magical, invisible tunnel at the back of the closet, a tunnel that only goblins could see and use.
That was ridiculous. Or was it? The very idea of goblins was ridiculous, too; yet they were out there; she'd seen them.
Davey's breathing became deep and slow and rhythmic. He was asleep.
Penny envied him. She knew she'd never sleep again.
Time passed. Slowly.
Her gaze moved around and around the dark room. The window. The door. The closet. The window.
She didn't know where the goblins would come from, but she knew, without doubt, that they would come.
XIII
Lavelle sat in his dark bedroom.
The additional assassins had risen out of the pit and had crept off into the night, into the storm-lashed city. Soon, both of the Dawson children would be slaughtered, reduced to nothing more than bloody mounds of dead meat.
That thought pleased and excited Lavelle. It even gave him an erection.
The rituals had drained him. Not physically or mentally. He felt alert, fresh, strong. But his Bocor's power had been depleted, and it was time to replenish it. At the moment, he was a Bocor in name only; drained like this, he was really just a man — and he didn't like being just a man.
Embraced by the darkness, he reached upward with his mind, up through the ceiling, through the roof of the house, through the snow-filled air, up toward the rivers of evil energy that flowed across the great city. He carefully avoided those currents of benign energy that also surged through the night, for they were of no use whatsoever to him; indeed, they posed a danger to him. He tapped into the darkest, foulest of those ethereal waters and let them pour down into him, until his own reservoirs were full once more.
In minutes he was reborn. Now he was more than a man. Less than a god, yes. But much, much more than just a man.
He had one more act of sorcery to perform this night, and he was happily anticipating it. He was going to humble Jack Dawson. At last he was going to make Dawson understand how awesome was the power of a masterful Bocor. Then, when Dawson's children were exterminated, the detective would understand how foolish he had been to put them at such risk, to defy a Bocor. He would see how easily he could have saved them — simply by swallowing his pride and walking away from the investigation. Then it would be clear to the detective that he, himself, had signed his own children's death warrants, and that terrible realization would shatter him.
XIV
Penny sat straight up in bed and almost shouted for Aunt Faye.
She had heard something. A strange, shrill cry. It wasn't human. Faint. Far away. Maybe in another apartment, several floors farther down in the building. The cry seemed to have come to her through the heating ducts.
She waited tensely. A minute. Two minutes. Three.
The cry wasn't repeated. There were no other unnatural sounds, either.