He made the mistake of looking directly into what he now confusedly thought must be a small window open directly to the weather.
A face appeared before him, a face he knew, wild and lost; then he glimpsed Elmer Scales moving clumsily through the snow; carrying a shotgun. Like the first apparition, the farmer was splashed with blood; the jug-eared face had starved down to skin-covered bone, but in Scales's fierce gauntness was something which forced Ricky to think he saw something beautiful- Elmer always wanted to look at something beautifuclass="underline" this bubbled to the surface of Ricky's mind and broke. Elmer was screaming into the blaring storm, lifting his gun and shooting at a small form, flipping it over in a spray of blood…
Then Elmer and his target blew away and he was looking at Lewis's back. A naked woman stood in front of Lewis, soundlessly mouthing words. Scripture, he read, then see Scripture in the pond, Lewis? The woman was not living, nor was she beautiful, but Ricky saw the lineaments of returned desire in the dead face and knew he was looking at Lewis's wife. He tried to back away and escape the vision, but found he could not move.
Just when the woman closed on Lewis, both she and he melting into unrecognizable forms, Ricky saw Peter Barnes crouching in a corner of the storm. No-in a building, some building he knew but could not recognize. Some long-familiar corner, a worn carpet, a curved tan wall with a dim light in a sconce… a man like a wolf was bending over terrified Peter Barnes, grinning at him with white prominent teeth. This time there was no melting, merciful snowfall to hide the dreadful thing from Ricky Hawthorne: the creature leaned over cowering Peter Barnes, picked him up and like a lion killing a gazelle, broke his back. Lionlike, it bit into the boy's skin and began to eat.
5
Sears James had inspected the front rooms of the house and found nothing; and nothing, he thought, was what they were most likely to find in all the rest of the house. One empty suitcase scarcely justified going even a foot beyond one's door, in weather like this. He came back into the hall, heard Don walking aimlessly about in a bedroom at the top of the stairs, and made a quick check through the kitchen. Wet footprints, their own, dirtied the floor. A single bleary water glass sat on a dusty counter. An empty sink, empty shelves. Sears chafed his cold hands together and came back out into the dark hallway.
Now Don was banging the walls upstairs-looking for a secret panel, Sears imagined, and shook his head. That all three of them were still alive and prowling through the house proved to Sears that Eva had moved on and left nothing behind.
He opened the door to the cellar. Wooden steps led down into complete blackness. Sears flicked the switch, and a bulb at the top of the steps went on. Its light revealed the steps and concrete floor at their bottom, but seemed to extend only seven or eight feet from the bottom of the steps. Apparently it was the only light; which meant, Sears realized, that the cellar was unused. The Robinsons had never turned the basement into a den or family room.
He went down a few steps and peered into the murk. What he could see looked like any Milburn cellar: extending under the whole of the house, about seven feet high, with walls of painted concrete block. The old furnace sat near the wall at the far end, casting a deep many-armed shadow which met and melted smoothly into the gloom; on one side stood the tall tubular cylinder for hot water and two disconnected iron sinks.
Sears heard a thump from upstairs, and his heart leaped: he was vastly more nervous than he wished to acknowledge. Tilting his head back toward the top of the stairs, he listened for further noises or sounds of distress, but heard none: probably no more than a slamming door.
Come down and play in the dark, Sears.
Sears took a step further down and saw his gigantic shadow advance along the concrete floor. Come on, Sears.
He did not hear the words spoken in his mind, he saw no images or pictures: but he had been commanded, and he followed his bloated shadow down onto the concrete floor.
Come and see the toys I left for you.
He reached the concrete floor and experienced a sick thrill of pleasure that was not his own.
Sears spun around, afraid that something was coming for him from under the wooden staircase. Light banded the concrete in stripes, streaming between the wood: nothing was there. He would have to leave the protection of the light and look into the corners of the cellar.
He moved forward, wishing wholeheartedly that he too had brought a knife, and his shadow melted away into dark. Then all doubt left him. "Oh, my God," he said.
John Jaffrey was stepping out into the shadowy light beside the furnace. "Sears, old friend," he said. His voice was toneless. "Thank heavens you're here. They told me you would be, but I didn't know-I mean I-" He shook his head. "It's all been so confused."
"Stay away from me," Sears said.
"I saw Milly," John said. "And do you know, Milly just won't let me in the house. But I warned her. I mean, I told her to warn you-and the others. About something. Can't remember now." He lifted his sunken face and twisted his mouth into a ghastly smile. "I went over. Isn't that what Fenny said to you? In your story? That's right. I went over, and now Milly won't-won't open-ah-" He raised his hand to his forehead. "Oh, it's just awful, Sears. Can't you help me?"
Sears was backing away from him, unable to speak.
"Please. Funny. Here in this place again. They made me come here-wait for you. Please help me, Sears. Thank heavens you're here."
Jaffrey lurched into the light, and Sears saw fine gray dust covering his face and outstretched hands, his bare feet. Jaffrey was moving in a painful, senile circle, his eyes too seemingly covered by a mixture of dust and drying tears-this spoke of more pain than his addled words and shuffling walk, and Sears, who remembered Peter Barnes's story about Lewis, at last felt more pity than fear.
"Yes, John," he said, and Dr. Jaffrey, apparently unable to see in the light from the naked bulb, turned toward his voice.
Sears went forward to touch Dr. Jaffrey's extended hand. At the last minute he closed his eyes. A tingling sensation passed through his fingers and traveled halfway up his arm. When he opened his eyes, John was no longer there.
He stumbled into the staircase, painfully bumping his ribs. Toys. Sears began mechanically to rub his hand against his coat: would he have to find more creatures shambling and dazed like John?
But no, that was not what he would have to do. Sears soon discovered the reason for the plural noun. He walked out of the light toward the furnace and saw a heap of clothing dumped by the far wall. A pile of discarded boots and rags: it was eerily like the scrubby bodies of the sheep on Elmer Scales's farm. He wanted to turn away: all the truly bad things had begun back there, with him and Ricky freezing on a cold white hill. Sears saw a flaccid hand, a swirl of blond hair. Then he recognized one of the rags as Christina Barnes's coat; it lay flat, nearly empty, flung over a second flattened and emptied body, and it enveloped a gray deflated thing ending in blond hair which was Christina's body.
Instinctively, the shout escaping him, he called for the other two; then Sears forced control on himself and went to the bottom of the stairs and began methodically, loudly, shamelessly to repeat their names.
6
"So you three found them," Hardesty said. "You look pretty shook up, too." Sears and Ricky were seated on a couch in John Jaffrey's house, Don in a chair immediately beside them. The sheriff, still wearing his coat and hat, was leaning against the mantel, trying to disguise the fact that he was very angry. The wet traces of his footprints on the carpet, a source of evident irritation to Milly Sheehan until Hardesty had sent her out of the room, showed a circling path of firm heelprints and squared-off toes.