Sam was tempted to rise, took through the window, and confront the creature face to face, for he was eager to see what one of them looked like close-up.
But as violent as these beings evidently were, a confrontation was certain to result in an attack and gunfire, which would draw the attention of the neighbors and then the police. He couldn't risk his current hiding place, for at the moment he had nowhere else to go.
He clutched his revolver and kept one hand on Moose and remained below the windowsill, listening. He heard voices, either wordless or so muffled that the words did not come clearly through the glass above his head. The second creature had joined the first at the side of the house. Their grumbling sounded like a low-key argument.
Silence followed.
Sam crouched there for a while, waiting for the voices to resume or for the amber-eyed beast to tap once more—tick-tick—but nothing happened. At last, as the muscles in his thighs and calves began to cramp, he took his hand off Moose and eased up to the window. He half expected the Boogeyman to be there, malformed face pressed to the glass, but it was gone.
With the dog accompanying him, he went from room to room on the ground floor, looking out all the windows on four sides of the house. He would not have been surprised to find those creatures trying to force entry somewhere.
But for the sound of rain drumming on the roof and gurgling in the downspouts, the house was silent.
He decided they were gone and that their interest in the house had been coincidental. They weren't looking for him in particular, just for prey. They very likely had glimpsed him at the window, and they didn't want to let him go if he had seen them. But if they had come to deal with him, they apparently had decided that they could no more risk the sound of breaking glass and a noisy confrontation than he could, not in the heart of town. They were secretive creatures. They might rarely cut loose with an eerie cry that would echo across Moonlight Cove, but only when in the grip of some strange passion. And thus far, for the most part, they had limited their attacks to people who had been relatively isolated.
Back in the living room he slipped the revolver into the holster again and stretched out on the sofa.
Moose sat watching him for a while, as if unable to believe that he could calmly lie down and sleep again after seeing what had been on the prowl in the rain.
"Some of my dreams are worse than what's out there tonight," he told the dog. "So if I spooked easily, I'd probably never want to go to sleep again."
The dog yawned and got up and went out into the dark hall, where he boarded the elevator. The motor hummed as the lift carried the Labrador upstairs.
As he waited for sleep to steal over him again, Sam attempted to shape his dreams into a more appealing pattern by concentrating on a few images he would not mind dreaming about: good Mexican food, barely chilled Guinness Stout, and Goldie Hawn. Ideally, he'd dream about being in a great Mexican restaurant with Goldie Hawn, who'd look even more radiant than usual, and they'd be eating and drinking Guinness and laughing.
Instead, when he did fall asleep, he dreamed about his father, a mean-tempered alcoholic, into whose hands he had fallen at the age of seven, after his mother had died in the car crash.
7
Nestled in the stack of grass-scented burlap tarps in the back of the gardener's truck, Chrissie woke when the automatic garage door ascended with a groan and clatter. She almost sat up in surprise, revealing herself. But remembering where she was, she pulled her head under the top half-dozen tarps, which she was using as blankets. She tried to shrink into the pile of burlap.
She heard rain striking the roof. It sliced into the gravel driveway just beyond the open door, making a sizzling noise like a thousand strips of bacon on an immense griddle. Chrissie was hungry. That sound made her hungrier.
"You got my lunch box, Sarah?"
Chrissie didn't know Mr. Eulane well enough to recognize his voice, but she supposed that was him, for Sarah Eulane, whose voice Chrissie did recognize, answered at once:
"Ed, I wish you'd just come back home after you drop me at the school. Take the day off. You shouldn't work in such foul weather."
"Well, I can't cut grass in this downpour," he said. "But I can do some other chores. I'll just pull on my vinyl anorak. Keeps me dry as bone. Moses could've walked through the Red Sea in that anorak and wouldn't have needed God's miracle to help him."
Breathing air filtered through the coarse, grass-stained cloth, Chrissie was troubled by a tickling sensation in her nose, all the way into her sinuses. She was afraid that she was going to sneeze.
STUPID YOUNG GIRL SNEEZES, REVEALING HERSELF TO RAVENOUS ALIENS; EATEN ALIVE; "SHE WAS A TASTY LITTLE MORSEL," SAYS ALIEN NEST QUEEN, "BRING US MORE OF YOUR ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD BLOND FEMALES."
Opening the passenger door of the truck, a couple of feet from Chrissie's hiding place, Sarah said, "You'll catch your death, Ed."
"You think I'm some delicate violet?" he asked playfully as he opened the driver's door and got into the truck.
"I think you're a withered old dandelion."
He laughed. "You didn't think so last night."
"Yes, I did. But you're my withered old dandelion, and I don't want YOU to just blow away on the wind."
One door slammed shut, then the other.
Certain that they could not see her, Chrissie pulled back the burlap, exposing her head. She pinched her nose and breathed through her mouth until the tickling in her sinuses subsided.
As Ed Eulane started the truck, let the engine idle a moment, then reversed out of the garage, Chrissie could hear them talking in the cab at her back. She couldn't make out everything they were saying, but they still seemed to be bantering with each other.
Cold rain struck her face, and she immediately pulled her head under the tarps again, leaving just a narrow opening by which a little fresh air might reach her. If she sneezed while in transit, the sound of the rain and the rumble of the truck's engine would cover it.
Thinking about the conversation she had overheard in the garage and listening to Mr. Eulane laughing now in the cab, Chrissie thought she could trust them. If they were aliens, they wouldn't be making dumb jokes and lovey talk. Maybe they would if they were putting on a show for non-aliens, trying to convince the world that they were still Ed and Sarah Eulane, but not when they were in private. When aliens were together without unconverted humans nearby, they probably talked about … well, planets they had sacked, the weather on Mars, the price of flying-saucer fuel, and recipes for serving human beings. Who knew? But surely they didn't talk as the Eulanes were talking.
On the other hand …
Maybe these aliens had only taken control of Ed and Sarah Eulane during the night, and maybe they were not yet comfortable in their human roles. Maybe they were practicing being human in private so they could pass for human in public. Sure as the devil, if Chrissie revealed herself, they'd probably sprout tentacles and lobster pincers from their chests and either eat her alive, without condiments, or freeze-dry her and mount her on a plaque and take her to their home world to hang on their den wall, or pop her brain out of her skull and plug it into their spaceship and use it as a cheap control mechanism for their inflight coffeemaker.
In the middle of an alien invasion, you could give your trust only with reluctance and considerable deliberation. She decided to stick to her original plan.
The fifty-pound, plastic sacks of fertilizer and mulch and snail bait, piled on both sides of her burlap niche, protected her from some rain, but enough reached her to soak the upper layers of tarps. She was relatively dry and toasty warm when they set out, but soon she was saturated with grass-scented rainwater, cold to the bone.