original patterns remains between the mullions, though in many places it
is bent and twisted and drooping, tortured by weather or by the hands of
vandals, rendering the outlines of the original religious symbols and
figures unrecognizable, and in their place leaving teratogenic forms as
meaningless as the shapes in melted candles.
The next to the last nave window is missing its steel frame, mullions,
and came. The granite stool marking the base of the window is five feet
off the ground. He boosts himself up with the nimbleness of a gymnast
and squats on his haunches on the deep sill. He peers into numberless
shadows interleaved with strange sinuous streams of radiant orange,
yellow, green, and blue.
A child screams.
Racing down the center aisle of the graffiti-smeared church, Paige had
the peculiar feeling that she was underwater in tropical climes, beneath
a Caribbean cove, in caverns of gaudily luminescent coral, equatorial
seaweed waving its feathery and radiant fronds on all sides o ner.
Charlotte screamed.
Having reached the chancel rail, Paige spun to face the nave.
Swinging the Mossberg left and right, searching in panic for the threat,
she saw The Other as Emily shouted, “In the window, get him!”
He was, indeed, squatting in one of the south-wall windows, a dark shape
that seemed only half human against the fading light and the whitening
showers of snow. Shoulders hunched, head low, arms dangling, he had an
apelike aspect.
Her reflexes were quick. She fired the Mossberg without hesitation.
Even if the distance hadn’t been in his favor, however, he would have
escaped untouched because he was moving even as she pulled the trigger.
With the fluid grace of a wolf, he seemed to pour off the sill and onto
the floor. The buckshot passed harmlessly through the space that he had
occupied and clattered off the window jambs that had framed him.
Evidently on all fours, he vanished among the rows of pews, where the
deepest shadows in the church were humbled. If she went hunting for him
there, he would drag her down and kill her.
She backed through the chancel rail and across the sanctuary to Marty
and the girls, keeping the shotgun ready.
The four of them retreated into an adjoining room that might have been
the sacristy. A pair of casement windows admitted barely enough light
to reveal three doors in addition to the one through which they’d
entered.
Paige closed the door to the sanctuary and attempted to lock it.
But it wasn’t equipped with a lock. No furniture was available to brace
or blockade it, either.
Marty tried one of the other doors. “Closet.”
Shrill wind and snow erupted through the door that Charlotte opened, so
she slammed it shut.
Checking the third possibility, Emily said, “Stairs.”
Among the pews. Creeping. Cautious.
He hears a door slam shut.
He waits.
Listens.
Hunger. Hot pain fades quickly to a low heat. Bleeding slows to a
trickle, an ooze. Now hunger overwhelms him as his body demands
enormous amounts of fuel to facilitate the reconstruction of damaged
tissues.
Already he’s metabolizing body fat and protein to make urgent repairs to
torn and severed blood vessels. His metabolism accelerates
unmercifully, an entirely autonomic function over which he has no power.
This gift that makes him so much less vulnerable than other men will
soon begin to exact a toll. His weight will decline. Hunger will
intensify until it is nearly as excruciating as the agony of mortal
wounds. The hunger will become a craving. The craving will become a
desperate need.
He considers retreating, but he is so close. So close. They are on the
run. Increasingly isolated. They cannot hold out against him.
If he perseveres, in minutes they will all be dead.
Besides, his hatred and rage are as great as his hunger. He is frantic
for the sweet satisfaction that only extreme violence can assure.
On the movie screen of his mind, homicidal images flicker enticingly,
bullet-shattered skulls, brutally hammered faces, gouged eyes, torn
throats, slashed torsos, flashing knives, hatchets, axes, severed limbs,
women on fire, screaming children, the bruised throats of young
prostitutes, flesh dissolving under a spray of acid….
He crawls out from among the pews, into the center aisle, rising into a