William caught her around the waist and pulled her back, without taking his wide eyes off the intruder.
“You promised you’d only visit when I was alone!” There was an inarticulate cry from a nearby room, and Christina screamed, “Mama, don’t come in here!”
Trelawny had aimed his pistol at the creature, then raised the barrel toward the ceiling when Christina had got in the line of fire, and now he aimed it again.
“I am welcome and assured of no harm in this house,” sang the blind thing, its mouth open in a wide smile that bared rows of white teeth against the coal-black lips, “and I have come to claim my proper bride.” He moved into the shaking center of the room with one rapid long-legged step.
Christina saw Trelawny’s pistol and shouted, “No, I gave him my word—”
But Trelawny fired, the stunning explosion of the shot momentarily compressing the air. The front of the thing’s trousers exploded in a spray of what appeared to be sawdust, and the figure bent double, still lunging forward.
“Gave me her word—!” it squealed, as William threw himself against the dining-room door to keep his mother from coming into the room.
Johanna struck one of its hands aside with a convulsive slash of her knife, and a finger, still gloved, flew through the dusty air and leaping shadows, and Trelawny fired again, and then once more, and Crawford thought the windows must break out into the street before the hammering blasts.
Johanna danced back away from the thing’s tumbling hat, and with her free hand she juggled a little jar out of her coat pocket and flung it hard onto the floor, and it shattered right under the bent-over creature’s face; the long-limbed thing recoiled away, and a moment later Crawford smelled garlic.
Trelawny caught his eye and jerked his head urgently toward the hall; Crawford nodded and grabbed McKee by the elbow and then caught Johanna by the shoulder and shoved them both toward the hallway door. Glancing back, he saw that Trelawny had paused only to bend and pick up the ghost bottle before hurrying after him.
The street door was wide open to the night, and the hall leading to it was a mess — either because of the earthquake or because of the blind thing’s blundering passage through it — with furniture overturned and pictures knocked off the walls.
“Down!” Trelawny yelled loudly, and Crawford didn’t have to push his wife and daughter to the floor, but simply fell on top of them.
Something rushed over his head, swirling the cold air and leaving a smell of clay and cologne in its wake — looking up cautiously after it had passed, he saw a contained black cloud rush out across the pavement of the street and sweep up out of sight beyond the door lintel.
A tangle of coats and hats and scarves was scattered across the floor. Hastily Crawford grabbed his own things and made sure that McKee and Johanna took somebody’s.
Then they were out on the dark street, hurrying away on foot down Tottenham Court Road as they hastily buttoned coats and pulled on scarves in the intensely cold wind.
Trelawny was moving more slowly than the other three, and panting. “Here,” he said, thrusting the bottle at Crawford. “Get to Chichuwee — he can boil her out — that pencil-and-paper stuff, table knocking, that’s — fine, if the ghost wants to talk to you.” He stopped and leaned against a lamppost and bent over and gripped his knees as he blew out quick puffs of steam. “Boiling—forces ’em.”
Johanna touched the old man’s arm. “We’ll get you into a cab,” she said.
“No,” snarled Trelawny weakly, “there’s no time. The three of you — separate, now! Meet at dawn. All of us. At”—he glanced apprehensively into the sky before going on—“at the place where you were married.” He straightened up and pushed away from the lamppost and began shuffling carefully away. “Don’t die in the meantime,” he added over his shoulder, “or I’ll — have your ghosts for breakfast.”
Two horses harnessed to an old four-wheeled clarence cab were clopping down the street in their direction, and Trelawny waved the driver toward the Crawfords.
“It’s got a roof — and four walls!” the old man yelled.
“Right,” snapped McKee, stepping into a patch of yellow streetlamp radiance in the cab’s path and waving her arms. “We cannot be together under a night sky. In, quick.”
The cab swerved to a halt, and McKee had opened the door before the old vehicle had stopped rocking on its springs, and she boosted Johanna inside and scrambled in herself and reached out a hand for Crawford.
Crawford was two steps away and hurrying forward when the thing struck.
CHAPTER THREE
Unripe harvest there hath none to reap it
From the watery, misty place;
Unripe vineyard there hath none to keep it
In unprofitable space.
THE ABRUPT ROAR of it was like mountains crashing together at the end of the world, and the sheer sudden air pressure of the sound blew Crawford’s hat away and drove him to his knees.
The cab slid away sideways across the shaking pavement, and the cab horses bolted, pulling the slewing cab after them in terrified acceleration down Tottenham Court Road.
Crawford rolled through the snow to the gutter, and he found himself staring straight up into the sky.
The stars were perceptibly moving outward from around a dark shape that was leaning down toward him; a number of wings or limbs radiated out from the central blackness of it, and it was rushing toward him at astronomical speed.
Instinctively he raised his arms to block it, and then he was seeing the thing over the top of the bottle that he still gripped in his hand.
The terrible roaring stopped so suddenly that Crawford almost felt weightless, and the bottle in his upraised hand was glowing now, blue and green and gold. He blinked against the dazzling light, but his view of the sky was now blocked by a broad figure in a black robe and a wide hood, facing away from him.
“I’m Clubs,” said the figure in a clear, resonant voice, and Crawford dazedly realized that it was a woman — a nun, in fact.
Beyond her he saw a flickering in the sky, and the air seemed to shiver and surge.
“I belong to your family,” the nun went on, “but not to you.”
For a moment the air was still — and then a gust of wind whipped down the street, so strongly that it rolled Crawford over onto his face.
He hugged the bottle and scrambled to his hands and knees and scuttled across the pavement to an iron fence, and when he dimly realized that he was trying to crawl between the close-set iron bars he sat back, coughing and shivering violently, and quickly swung his gaze in every direction.
The sky was empty except for stars. More lights were on in nearby windows, but nobody had yet burst out into the street to see what the terrible noise had been, and though it should have frightened all the horses in this dozen streets, several cabs were wheeling along the street sedately enough. By the dimming glow of the bottle he still held, Crawford saw the round-faced nun standing near him in the street, and she smiled.
“Poor man,” she said, and then as she sighed, he was able to see windows and walls across the street through the space where she had been.
Crawford got weakly to his feet, gasping and still shivering, for the cold wind had found his sweat-damp shirt and hair. Cabs and carriages whirred past, the horses’ hooves clattering on the icy road, and the drivers were all too bundled up in hats and scarves to even glance at where Crawford stood.