“Who are you?” Dwoskin demanded. In answer, the graffiti ignited into a full-blown literature. Not certain if any sound was coming out, the Troll-King began to screech.
Stephanie dropped the eyeliner into the sink as the scream reached her. She didn’t recognize the voice. It was high enough to be a woman’s, but it was neither Emily nor Oriana.
The shakes suddenly worsened. She held on to the edge of the sink to steady herself as the noises multiplied: howls now, and running feet. Somebody was shouting; all but incoherent orders. It was Ottaway, she thought, but she wasn’t going out to check. Whatever was going on beyond the door-pursuit, capture, murder even-she needed none of it. She turned off the light in the bathroom in case it spilled under the door. Somebody ran by, calling on God: now there was desperation. Feet thudded down the stairs; somebody fell. Doors slammed: screams mounted.
She backed away from the door and sat on the edge of the bath. There, in the darkness, she started to sing “Abide with Me”-or what little she could remember of it-very quietly.
Marty heard the screams too, though he didn’t want to. Even at such a distance, they carried a freight of blind panic that made him clammy.
He knelt down in the dirt between the trees and stopped his ears. The earth smelled ripe beneath him, and his mind seethed with unwelcome thoughts of lying faceup in the ground, dead perhaps, but anticipating resurrection. Like a sleeper on the verge of waking, nervous of the day.
After a while the din became intermittent. Soon, he told himself, he must open his eyes, stand up and go back to the house to see the hows and the whys of all this commotion. Soon; but not yet.
When the noise in the hallway and on the stairs had long stopped, Stephanie crept to the bathroom door, unlocked it and peered out. The corridor was in complete darkness now. The lamps had either been turned off or shattered. But her eyes, accustomed to the blackness of the bathroom, soon pierced the feeble light from the stairwell. The gallery was empty in both directions. There was just a smell in the air like a bad butcher’s shop on a hot day.
She slipped off her shoes, and started to the top of the stairs. The contents of a handbag were scattered down the steps, and there was something wet underfoot. She looked down: the carpet was stained: either wine or blood. She hurried on down into the hallway. It was chilly; both front and vestibule doors were wide open. Again, there was no sign of life. The cars had gone from the driveway; the downstairs rooms-library, reception rooms, kitchen-all were forsaken. She rushed back upstairs to collect her belongings from the white room and leave.
As she retraced her steps along the gallery she heard a soft padding behind her. She turned. There was a dog at the top of the stairs; it had presumably followed her up. She could scarcely make it out in the bad light, but she wasn’t afraid. “Good boy,” she said, glad of its living presence in the abandoned house.
It didn’t growl, nor did it wag its tail, it simply hobbled towards her. Only then did she realize her error in welcoming it. The butcher’s shop was here, on all fours: she backed off.
“No . . .” she said, “I don’t . . . oh, Christ . . . leave me alone.”
Still it came; and with every step it took toward her she saw more of its condition. The innards that looped from its underside. The decayed face, all teeth and putrescence. She headed toward the white room, but it covered the distance between them in three strides. Her hands slid on its body as it leaped at her, and to her disgust fur and flesh separated, her grasp skinning the creature’s flanks. She fell back; it advanced, head rocking uneasily on its scrappy neck, its jaws closing around her throat and shaking her. She couldn’t scream-it was devouring her voice-but her arm thrust up into the cold body and found its spine. Instinct made her grasp the column, muscle dividing in slimy threads, and the beast let her go, arching back as her grip snapped one vertabrae from the next. It let out a prolonged hiss as she dragged her arm out. Her other hand cupped her throat: blood was hitting the carpet with thudding sounds: she must get help or bleed to death.