‘Let him alone,’ the Wayne-thing said, but it was not Wayne’s voice – it was the cold, greedy voice of the thing from the pentagram. Run, Jimmy! Run! Run! Run!’
Jim slipped to his knees and a hand slapped down on his back, groping for purchase, and found none.
He looked up and saw Vinnie, his face stretching into a caricature of hatred, drive his knife into the Wayne-thing just below the breastbone . . . and then scream, his face collapsing in on itself, charring, blackening, becoming awful.
Then he was gone.
Garcia and Lawson struck a moment later, writhed, charred, and disappeared.
Jim lay on the floor, breathing harshly. The sound of the freight train faded.
His brother was looking down at him.
‘Wayne?’ he breathed.
And the face changed. It seemed to melt and run together. The eyes went yellow, and a horrible, grinning malignancy looked out at him.
‘I’ll come back, Jim,’ the cold voice whispered.
And it was gone.
He got up slowly and turned off the record player with one mangled hand. He touched his mouth. It was bleeding from Garcia’s punch. He went over and turned on the lights. The room was empty. He looked out into the parking lot and that was empty, too, except for one hubcap that reflected the moon in idiot pantomime. The classroom air smelled old and stale – the atmosphere of tombs. He erased the pentagram on the floor and then began to straighten up the desks for the substitute the next day. His fingers hurt very badly – what fingers? He would have to see a doctor. He closed the door and went downstairs slowly, holding his hands to his chest. Halfway down, something -a shadow, or perhaps only an intuition – made him whirl around.
Something unseen seemed to leap back.
Jim remembered the warning in Raising Demons – the danger involved. You could perhaps summon them, perhaps cause them to do your work. You could even get rid of them.
But sometimes they come back.
He walked down the stairs again, wondering if the nightmare was over after all.