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.
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.
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
firedLavelle 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.