Darkfall

by Dean R. Koontz

  IV

  Lavelle stood by the window, looking out at the storm.

  He was no longer in psychic contact with the small assassins. Given more time, time to marshal their forces, they might yet be able to kill the Dawson children, and if they did he would be sorry he'd missed it. But time was running out.

  Jack Dawson was coming, and no sorcery, regardless of how powerful it might be, would stop him.

  Lavelle wasn't sure how everything had gone wrong so quickly, so completely. Perhaps it had been a mistake to target the children. The Rada was always incensed at a Bocor who used his power against children, and they always tried to destroy him if they could. Once committed to such a course, you had to be extremely careful. But, damnit, he had been careful. He couldn't think of a single mistake he might have made. He was well-armored; he was protected by all the power of the dark gods.

  Yet Dawson was coming.

  Lavelle turned away from the window.

  He crossed the dark room to the dresser.

  He took a.32 automatic out of the top drawer.

  Dawson was coming. Fine. Let him come.

  V

  Rebecca sat down in the aisle of the cathedral and pulled up the right leg of her jeans, above her knee. The claw and fang wounds were bleeding freely, but she was in no danger of bleeding to death. The jeans had provided some protection. The bites were deep but not too deep. No major veins or arteries had been severed.

  The young priest, Father Walotsky, crouched beside her, appalled by her injuries. “How did this happen? What did this to you?”

  Both Penny and Davey said, “Goblins,” as if they were getting tired of trying to make him understand.

  Rebecca pulled off her gloves. On her right hand was a fresh, bleeding bite mark, but no flesh was torn away; it was just four small puncture wounds. The gloves, like her jeans, had provided at least some protection. Her left hand bore two bite marks; one was bleeding and seemed no more serious than the wound on her right hand, painful but not mortal, while the other was the old bite she'd received in front of Faye's apartment building.

  Father Walotsky said, “What's all that blood on your neck?” He put a hand to her face, gently pressed her hand back, so he could see the scratches under her chin.

  “Those're minor,” she said. “They sting, but they're not serious.

  “I think we'd better get you some medical attention,” he said. “Come on.”

  She pulled down the leg of her jeans.

  He helped her to her feet. “I think it would be all right if I took you to the rectory.”

  “No,” she said.

  “It's not far.”

  “We're staying here,” she said.

  “But those look like animal bites. You've got to have them attended to. Infection, rabies…. Look, it's not far to the rectory. We don't have to go out in the storm, either. There's an underground passage between the cathedral and—”

  “No,” Rebecca said firmly. “We're staying here, in the cathedral, where we're protected.”

  She motioned for Penny and Davey to come close to her, and they did, eagerly, one on each side of her.

  The priest looked at each of them, studied their faces, met their eyes, and his face darkened. “What are you afraid of?”

  “Didn't the kids tell you some of it?” Rebecca asked.

  “They were babbling about goblins, but—”

  “It wasn't just babble,” Rebecca said, finding it odd to be the one professing and defending a belief in the supernatural, she who had always been anything but excessively open-minded on the subject. She hesitated. Then, as succinctly as possible, she told him about Lavelle, the slaughter of the Carramazzas, and the voodoo devils that were now after Jack Dawson's children.

  When she finished, the priest said nothing and couldn't meet her eyes. He stared at the floor for long seconds.

  She said, “Of course, you don't believe me.”

  He looked up and appeared to be embarrassed. “Oh, I don't think you're lying to me… exactly. I'm sure you believe everything you've told me. But, to me, voodoo is a sham, a set of primitive superstitions. I'm a priest of the Holy Roman Church, and I believe in only one Truth, the Truth that Our Savior—”

  “You believe in Heaven, don't you? And Hell?”

  “Of course. That's part of Catholic—”

  “These things have come straight up from Hell, Father. If I'd told you that it was a Satanist who had summoned these demons, if I'd never mentioned the word voodoo, then maybe you still wouldn't have believed me, but you wouldn't have dismissed the possibility so fast, either, because your religion encompasses Satan and Satanists.”

  “I think you should—”

  Davey screamed.

  Penny said, “They're here!”

  Rebecca turned, breath caught in her throat, heart hanging in mid-beat.

  Beyond the archway through which the center aisle of the nave entered the vestibule, there were shadows, and in those shadows were silver-white eyes glowing brightly. Eyes of fire. Lots of them.

  VI

  Jack drove the snow-packed streets, and as he approached each intersection, he somehow sensed when a right turn was required, when he should go left instead, and when he should just speed straight through. He didn't know how he sensed those things; each time, a feeling came over him, a feeling he couldn't put into words, and he gave himself to it, followed the guidance that was being given to him. It was certainly unorthodox procedure for a cop accustomed to employing less exotic techniques in the search for a suspect. It was also creepy, and he didn't like it. But he wasn't about to complain, for he desperately wanted to find Lavelle.

  Thirty-five minutes after they had collected the two small jars of holy water, Jack made a left turn into a street of pseudo-Victorian houses. He stopped in front of the fifth one. It was a three-story brick house with lots of gingerbread trim. It was in need of repairs and painting, as were all the houses in the block, a fact that even the snow and darkness couldn't hide. There were no lights in the house; not one. The windows were perfectly black.

  “We're here,” Jack told Carver.

  He cut the engine, switched off the headlights.

  VII

  Four goblins crept out of the vestibule, into the center aisle, into the light that, while not bright, revealed their grotesque forms in more stomach-churning detail than Rebecca would have liked.

  At the head of the pack was a foot-tall, man-form creature with four fire-filled eyes, two in its forehead.

  Its head was the size of an apple, and in spite of the four eyes, most of the misshapen skull was given over to a mouth crammed full and bristling with teeth. It also had four arms and was carrying a crude spear in one spikefingered hand.

  It raised the spear above its head in a gesture of challenge and defiance.

  Perhaps because of the spear, Rebecca was suddenly possessed of a strange but unshakable conviction that the man-form beast had once been — in very ancient times — a proud and blood-thirsty African warrior who had been condemned to Hell for his crimes and who was now forced to endure the agony and humiliation of having his soul embedded within a small, deformed body.

  The man-form goblin, the three even more hideous creatures behind it, and the other beasts moving through the dark vestibule (and now seen only as pairs of shining eyes) all moved slowly, as if the very air inside this house of worship was, for them, an immensely heavy burden that made every step a painful labor. None of them hissed or snarled or shrieked, either. They just approached silently, sluggishly, but implacably.

  Beyond the goblins, the doors to the street still appeared to be closed. They had entered the cathedral by some other route, through a vent or a drain that was unscreened and offered them an easy entrance, a virtual invitation, the equivalent of the “open door” that they, like vampires, probably needed in order to come where evil wasn't welcome.

  Father Walotsky, briefly mesmerized by his first glimpse of the goblins, was the first to break
the silence.

  He fumbled in a pocket of his black cassock, withdrew a rosary, and began to pray.

  The man-form devil and the three things immediately behind it moved steadily closer, along the main aisle, and other monstrous beings crept and slithered out of the dark vestibule, while new pairs of glowing eyes appeared in the darkness there. They still moved too slowly to be dangerous.

  But how long will that last? Rebecca wondered. Perhaps they'll somehow become conditioned to the atmosphere in the cathedral. Perhaps they'll gradually become bolder and begin to move faster. What then?

  Pulling the kids with her, Rebecca began to back up the aisle, toward the altar. Father Walotsky came with them, the rosary beads clicking to his hands.

  VIII

  They slogged through the snow to the foot of the steps that led up to Lavelle's front door.

  Jack's revolver was already in his hand. To Carver Hampton, he said, “I wish you'd wait in the car.”

  “No.”

  “This is police business.”

  “It's more than that. You know it's more than that.”

  Jack sighed and nodded.

  They climbed the steps.

  Obtaining an arrest warrant, pounding on the door, announcing his status as an officer of the law — none of that usual procedure seemed necessary or sensible to Jack. Not in this bizarre situation. Still, he wasn't comfortable or happy about just barging into a private residence.

  Carver tried the doorknob, twisted it back and forth several times. “Locked.”

  Jack could see that it was locked, but something told him to try it for himself. The knob turned under his hand, and the latch clicked softly, and the door opened a crack.

  “Locked for me,” Carver said “but not for you.”

  They stepped aside, out of the fine of fire.

  Jack reached out, pushed the door open hard, and snatched his hand back.

  But Lavelle didn't shoot.

  They waited ten or fifteen seconds, and snow blew in through the open door. Finally, crouching, Jack moved into the doorway and crossed the threshold, his gun thrust out in front of him.

  The house was exceptionally dark. Darkness would work to Lavelle's advantage, for he was familiar with the place, while it was all strange territory to Jack.

  He fumbled for the light switch and found it.

  He was in a broad entrance hall. To the left were inlaid oak stairs with an ornate railing. Directly ahead, beyond the stairs, the hall narrowed and led all the way to the rear of the house. A couple of feet ahead and to the right, there was an archway, beyond which lay more darkness.

  Jack edged to the brink of the arch. A little light spilled in from the hall, but it showed him only a section of bare floor. He supposed it was a living room.

  He reached awkwardly around the corner, trying to present a slim profile, feeling for another light switch, found and flipped it. The switch operated a ceiling fixture; light filled the room. But that was just about the only thing in it — light. No furniture. No drapes. A film of gray dust, a few balls of dust in the corners, a lot of light, and four bare walls.

  Carver moved up beside Jack and whispered, “Are you sure this is the right place?”

  As Jack opened his mouth to answer, he felt something whiz past his face and, a fraction of a second later, he heard two loud shots, fired from behind him. He dropped to the floor, rolled out of the hall, into the living room.

  Carver dropped and rolled, too. But he had been hit.

  His face was contorted by pain. He was clutching his left thigh, and there was blood on his trousers.

  “He's on the stairs,” Carver said raggedly. “I got a glimpse.”

  “Must've been upstairs, then came down behind us.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jack scuttled to the wall beside the archway, crouched there. “You hit bad?”

  “Bad enough,” Carver said. “Won't kill me, though. You just worry about getting him.”

  Jack leaned around the archway and squeezed off a shot right away, at the staircase, without bothering to look or aim first.

  Lavelle was there. He was halfway down the final flight of stairs, hunkered behind the railing.

  Jack's shot tore a chunk out of the bannister two feet from the Bocor's head.

  Lavelle returned the fire, and Jack ducked back, and shattered plaster exploded from the edge of the archway.

  Another shot.

  Then silence.

  Jack leaned out into the archway again and pulled off three shots in rapid succession, aiming at where Lavelle had been, but Lavelle was already on his way upstairs, and all three shots missed him, and then he was out of sight.

  Pausing to reload his revolver with the loose bullets he carried in one coat pocket, Jack glanced at Carver and said, “Can you make it out to the car on your own?”

  “No. Can't walk with this leg. But I'll be all right here. He only winged me. You just go get him.”

  “We should call an ambulance for you.”

  “Just get him!” Carver said.

  Jack nodded, stepped through the archway, and went cautiously to the foot of the stairs.

  IX

  Penny, Davey, Rebecca, and Father Walotsky took refuge in the chancel, behind the altar railing. In fact, they climbed up onto the altar platform, directly beneath the crucifix.

  The goblins stopped on the other side of the railing. Some of them peered between the ornate supporting posts. Others climbed onto the communion rail itself, perched there, eyes flickering hungrily, black tongues licking slowly back and forth across their sharp teeth.

  There were fifty or sixty of them now, and more were still coming out of the vestibule, far back at the end of the main aisle.

  “They w-won't come up here, wow-will they?” Penny asked. “Not this c-close to the crucifix. Will they?”

  Rebecca hugged the girl and Davey, held them tight and dose. She said, “You can see they've stopped. It's all right. It's all right now. They're afraid of the altar.

  They've stopped.”

  But for how long? she wondered.

  X

  Jack climbed the stairs with his back flat against the wall, moving sideways, trying to be utterly silent, nearly succeeding. He held his revolver in his left hand, with his arm rigidly extended, aiming at the top of the steps, his aim never wavering as he ascended, so he'd be ready to pull the trigger the instant Lavelle appeared. He reached the landing without being shot at, climbed three steps of the second flight, and then Lavelle leaned out around the corner above, and both of them fired — Lavelle twice, Jack once.

  Lavelle pulled the trigger without pausing to take aim, without even knowing exactly where Jack was. He just took a chance that two rounds, placed down the center of the stairwell, would do the job. Both missed.

  On the other hand, Jack's gun was aimed along the wall, and Lavelle leaned right into its line of fire. The slug smashed into his arm at the same moment he finished pulling the trigger of his own gun. He screamed, and the pistol flew out of his hand, and he stumbled back into the upstairs hall where he'd been hiding.

  Jack took the stairs two at a time, jumping over Lavelle's pistol as it came tumbling down. He reached the second-floor hallway in time to see Lavelle enter a room and slam the door behind him.

  Downstairs, Carver lay on the dust-filmed floor, eyes closed. He was too weary to keep his eyes open. He was growing wearier by the second.

  He didn't feel like he was lying on a hard floor. He felt as if he were floating in a warm pool of water, somewhere in the tropics. He remembered being shot, remembered falling; he knew the floor really was there, under him, but he just couldn't feel it.

  He figured he was bleeding to death. The wound didn't seem that bad, but maybe it was worse than he thought. Or maybe it was just shock that made him feel this way. Yeah, that must be it, shock, just shock, not bleeding to death after all, just suffering from shock, but of course shock could kill, too.

  Whatever the reasons, he
floated, oblivious of his own pain, just bobbing up and down, drifting there on the hard floor that wasn't hard at all, drifting on some far-away tropical tide… until, from upstairs, there was the sound of gunfire and a shrill scream that snapped his eyes open. He had an out-of-focus, floor-level view of the empty room. He blinked his eyes rapidly and squinted until his clouded visions cleared, and then — he wished it hadn't cleared because he saw that he was no longer alone.

  One of the denizens of the pit was with him, its eyes aglow.

  Upstairs, Jack tried the door that Lavelle had slammed. It was locked, but the lock probably didn't amount to much, just a privacy set, flimsy as they could be made, because people didn't want to put heavy and expensive locks inside a house.

  “Lavelle?” he shouted.

  No answer.

  “Open up. No use trying to hide in there.”

  From inside the room came the sound of a shattering wmdow.

  “Shit,” Jack said.

  He stepped back and kicked at the door, but there was more to the lock than he'd expected, and he had to kick it four times, as hard as he could, before he finally smashed it open.

  He switched on the light. An ordinary bedroom. No sign of Lavelle.

  The window in the opposite wall was broken out. Drapes billowed on the in-rushing wind.

  Jack checked the closet first, just to be sure this wasn't a bit of misdirection to enable Lavelle to get behind his back. But no one waited in the closet.

  He went to the window. In the light that spilled past him, he saw footprints in the snow that covered the porch roof. They led out to the edge. Lavelle had jumped down to the yard below.

  Jack squeezed through the window, briefly snagging his coat on a shard of glass, and went onto the roof.

  In the cathedral, approximately seventy or eighty goblins had come out of the vestibule. They were lined up on the communion rail and between the supporting posts under the rail. Behind them, other beasts slouched up the long aisle.