white magic, but now he suddenly was able to do more than accept it; he
was able to understand it in concrete terms, and he knew he now
understood it better than Lavelle or Carver ever had or ever would. He
looked into the pit and he knew. Hell was not a mythical place, and
there was nothing supernatural about demons and gods, nothing holy or
unholy about them. Hell-and consequently Heaven-were as real as the
earth; they were merely other dimensions, other planes of physical
existence. Normally, it was impossible for a living man or woman to
cross over from one plane to the other. But religion was the crude and
clumsy science that had theorized ways in which to bring the planes
together, if only temporarily, and magic was the tool of that science.
After absorbing that realization, it seemed as easy to believe in voodoo
or Christianity or any other religion as it was to believe in the
existence of the atom.
He threw the holy water, jar and all, into the pit.
The goblins surged through the communion rail and up the steps toward
the altar platform.
The kids screamed, and Father Walotsky held his rosary out in front of
him as if certain it would render him impervious to the assault. Rebecca
drew her gun, though she knew it was useless, took careful aim on the
first of the pack And all one hundred of the goblins turned to clumps of
earth which cascaded harmlessly down the altar steps.
The worm-thing swung its hateful head back toward Carver and hissed and
struck at him.
He screamed.
Then gasped in surprise as nothing more than dirt showered over him.
The holy water disappeared into the pit.
The jubilant squeals, the roars of hatred, the triumphant screams all
ceased as abruptly as if someone had pulled the plug on a stereo. The
silence lasted only a second, and then the nigh’ was filled with cries
of anger, rage, frustration, and anguish.
The earth shook more violently than before.
Jack was knocked off his feet, but he fell backwards, away from the pit.
He saw that the rim had stopped dissolving. The hole wasn’t getting any
larger.
The mammoth appendage that towered over him, like some massive fairytale
serpent, did not take a swipe at him as he had been afraid it might.
Instead, its disgusting mouth sucking ceaselessly at the night, it
collapsed back into the pit.
Jack got to his feet again. His overcoat was caked with snow.
The earth continued to shake. He felt as if he were standing on an egg
from which something deadly was about to hatch. Cracks radiated out
from the pit, half a dozen of them-four, six, even eight inches wide and
as much as ten feet long. Jack found himself between the two largest
gaps, on an unstable island of rocking, heaving earth. The snow melted
into the cracks, and light shone up from the strange depths, and heat
rose in waves as if from an open furnace door, and for one ghastly
moment it seemed as if the entire world would shatter underfoot. Then
quickly, mercifully, the cracks closed up again, sealed tight, as if
they had never been.
The light began to fade within the pit, changing from red to orange
around the edges.
The hellish voices were fading, too.
The gates were easing shut.
With a flush of triumph, Jack inched closer to the rim, squinting into
the hole, trying to see more of the monstrous and fantastic shapes that
writhed and raged beyond the glare.
The light suddenly pulsed, grew brighter, startling him. The screaming
and bellowing became louder.
He stepped back.
The light dimmed once more, then grew brighter again, dimmed, grew
brighter. The immortal entities beyond the Gates were struggling to
keep them open, to force them wide.
The rim of the pit began to dissolve again. Earth crumbled away in
small clods. Then stopped. Then started. In spurts, the pit was still
growing.
Jack’s heart seemed to beat in concert with the crumbling of the pit’s
perimeter. Each time the dirt began to fall away, his heart seemed to
stop; each time the perimeter stabilized, his heart began to beat again.