But she knew what she had heard and what it meant. They were coming for her and Davey. They were on their way now. Soon, they would be here.
XV
This time, their love-making was slow, lazy, achingly tender, filled with much nuzzling and wordless murmuring and soft-soft stroking. A series of dreamy sensations: a feeling of floating, a feeling of being composed only of sunlight and other energy, an exhilaratingly weightless tumbling, tumbling. This time, it was not so much an act of sex as it was an act of emotional bonding, a spiritual pledge made with the flesh. And when, at last, Jack spurted deep within her velvet recesses, he felt as if he were fusing with her, melting into her, becoming one with her., and he sensed that she felt the same thing.
“That was wonderful.”
“Perfect.”
“Better than a peanut butter and onion sandwich?”
“Almost.”
“You bastard.”
“Hey, peanut butter and onion sandwiches are pretty darned terrific, you know!”
“I love you,” he said.
“I'm glad,” she said.
That was an improvement.
She still couldn't bring herself to say she loved him, too. But he wasn't particularly bothered by that. He knew she did.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressing.
She was standing on the other side of the bed, slipping into her blue robe.
Both of them were startled by a sudden violent movement. A framed poster from a Jasper Johns art exhibition tore loose of its mountings and flew off the wall. It was a large poster, three-and-a-half-feet-by-two-and-a half-feet, framed behind glass. It seemed to hang in the air for a moment, vibrating, and then it struck the floor at the foot of the bed with a tremendous crash.
“What the hell!” Jack said.
“What could've done that?” Rebecca said.
The sliding closet door flew open with a bang, slammed shut, flew open again.
The six-drawer highboy tipped away from the wall, toppled toward Jack, and he jumped out of the way, and the big piece of furniture hit the floor with the sound of a bomb explosion.
Rebecca backed against the wall and stood there, rigid and wide-eyed, her hands fisted at her sides.
The air was cold. Wind whirled through the room. Not just a draft, but a wind almost as powerful as the one that whipped through the city streets, outside. Yet there was nowhere that a cold wind could have gained admission; the door and the window were closed tight.
And now, at the window, it seemed as if invisible hands grabbed the drapes and tore them loose of the rod from which they were hung. The drapes dropped in a heap, and then the rod itself was torn out of the wall and thrown aside.
Drawers slid all the way out of the nightstands and fell onto the floor, spilling their contents.
Several strips of wallpaper began to peel off the walls, starting at the top and going down.
Jack turned this way and that, frightened, confused, not sure what he should do.
The dresser mirror cracked in a spiderweb pattern.
The unseen presence stripped the blanket from the bed and pitched it onto the toppled highboy.
“Stop it!” Rebecca shouted at the empty air. “Stop it!”
The unseen intruder did not obey.
The top sheet was pulled from the bed. It whirled into the air, as if it had been granted life and the ability to fly; it floated off into a corner of the room, where it collapsed, lifeless again.
The fitted bottom sheet popped loose at two corners.
Jack grabbed it.
The other two corners came loose, as well.
Jack tried to hold on to the sheet. It was a feeble and pointless effort to resist whatever power was wrecking the room, but it was the only thing he could think to do, and he simply had to do something. The sheet was quickly wrenched out of his hands with such force that he was thrown off balance. He stumbled and fell to his knees.
On a wheeled TV stand in the corner, the portable television set snapped on of its own accord, the volume booming. A fat woman was dancing the cha-cha with a cat, and a thunderous chorus was singing the praises of Purina Cat Chow.
Jack scrambled to his feet.
The mattress cover was skinned off the bed, lifted into the air, rolled into a ball, and thrown at Rebecca.
On the TV, George Plimpton was shouting like a baboon about the virtues of Intellivision.
The mattress was bare now. The quilted sheath dimpled; a rent appeared in it. The fabric tore right down the middle, from top to bottom, and stuffing erupted along with a few uncoiling springs that rose like cobras to an unheard music.
More wallpaper peeled down.
On the TV, a barker for the American Beef Council was shouting about the benefits of eating meat, while an unseen chef carved a bloody roast on camera.
The closet door slammed so hard that it jumped partially out of its track and rattled back and forth.
The TV screen imploded. Simultaneously with the sound of breaking glass, there was a brief flash of light within the guts of the set, and then a little smoke.
Silence.
Stillness.
Jack glanced at Rebecca.
She looked bewildered. And terrified.
The telephone rang.
The instant Jack heard it, he knew who was calling. He snatched up the receiver, held it to his ear, said nothing.
“You're panting like a dog, Detective Dawson,” Lavelle said. “Excited? Evidently, my little demonstration thrilled you.”
Jack was shaking so badly and uncontrollably that he didn't trust his voice. He didn't reply because he didn't want Lavelle to hear how scared he was.
Besides, Lavelle didn't seem interested in anything Jack might have to say; he didn't wait long enough to hear a reply even if one had been offered. The Bocor said, “When you see your kids — dead, mangled, their eyes torn out, their lips eaten off, their fingers bitten to the bone — remember that you could have saved them. Remember that you're the one who signed their death warrants. You bear the responsibility for their deaths as surely as if you'd seen them walking in front of a train and didn't even bother to call out a warning to them. You threw away their lives as if they were nothing but garbage to you.”
A torrent of words spewed from Jack before he even realized he was going to speak: “You fucking sleazy son of a bitch, you'd better not touch one hair on them!
You'd better not—”
Lavelle had hung up.
Rebecca said, “Who—”
“Lavelle.”
“You mean… all of this?”
“You believe in black magic now? Sorcery? Voodoo? ”
“Oh, my God.”
“I sure as hell believe in it now.”
She looked around at the demolished room, shaking her head, trying without success to deny the evidence before her eyes.
Jack remembered his own skepticism when Carver Hampton had told him about the falling bottles and the black serpent. No skepticism now. Only terror now.
He thought of the bodies he had seen this morning and this afternoon, those hideously ravaged corpses.
His heart jackhammered. He was short of breath. He felt as if he might vomit.
He still had the phone in his hand. He punched out a number.
Rebecca said, “Who're you calling?”
“Faye. She's got to get the kids out of there, fast.”
“But Lavelle can't know where they are.”
“He couldn't have known where I was, either. I didn't tell anyone I was coming to see you. I wasn't followed here; I'm sure I wasn't. He couldn't have known where to find me — and yet he knew. So he probably knows where to find the kids, too. Damnit, why isn't it ringing? “