Melanie writhed in her seat and struck at the empty air. Her blows landed on Laura, who tried to force the girl to wake up.
No sooner had the screen torn, silencing the audience, than the heavy curtains flanking it were pulled out of the tracks in the ceiling. They flapped in the air like great wings, as if the devil himself had risen into the theater and was unfolding his batlike appendages; then they collapsed with a whoosh! into huge piles of lifeless material.
That was too much for the audience. Confused and frightened, people rose from their seats.
After taking a score of hard blows on her arms and face, Laura got hold of Melanie’s wrists and kept her still. She looked over her shoulder, toward the front of the theater.
The projectionist had not touched his equipment yet, so a queer luminosity still bounced off the ruined screen, and a vague amber radiance was provided by the torch-shaped emergency lamps along the walls. The light was just sufficient for everyone to see what happened next. Empty seats in the front row tore loose of the floor, to which they were bolted, and shot violently up and backward, into the air. They struck the large screen, punched through the fabric, destroying what remained of it.
People began to scream, and a few ran toward the exits at the back of the theater.
Someone yelled, ‘Earthquake!’
An earthquake didn’t explain it, of course, and it wasn’t likely that anyone believed that explanation. But that word, much dreaded in California since the Northridge temblor, stoked the panic. More seats — those in the second row — erupted from the floor: bolts snapped, metal shredded, concrete burst.
It was, Laura thought, as if some gigantic invisible best had entered at the front of the theater and was making its way toward them, destroying everything in its path.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Earl shouted, although he knew as well as she did that they could not run from this thing, whatever it was.
Melanie had ceased struggling. She was limp, like a pile of knotted rags, so limp that she might have been dead. The projectionist switched off his machinery and turned up the house lights. Everyone but Laura, Melanie, and Earl had surged to the back of the theater, and half the audience had already spilled out into the lobby.
Heart jackhammering, Laura scooped Melanie into her arms and stumbled along the row, into the aisle, with Earl following close behind her.
Now seats were exploding into the air from the fourth row and crashing backward into the demolished screen with thunderous impact. But the worst sound was coming from the emergency-exit doors that flanked the screen. They swung open and slammed shut, again and again, banging back and forth with such tremendous force that their pneumatic cylinders, which should have ensured a soft closing every time, could not cope.
Laura saw not doors but flapping mouths, hungry mouths, and she knew that if she was foolish enough to try to escape through those exits, she would find herself stepping not into the theater parking lot but into the gullet of some unimaginably foul beast. Crazy thought. Insane. She was teetering on the brink of mindless panic.
If she had not experienced the poltergeist phenomena on a smaller scale in her own kitchen, she would have been unhinged by the sight before her. What was it? What was It? And why the hell did it want Melanie?
Dan knew. At least he knew part of it.
But it didn’t matter what he knew, because he couldn’t help them now. Laura doubted that she would ever see him again.
Considering that she was hysterical and already emotionally overcharged, the thought of never seeing Haldane again hit her harder than seemed possible.
She had no sooner reached the aisle than her knees began to buckle under the combined weight of her terror and Melanie. Earl jammed his revolver back into its holster and took the girl out of Laura’s arms.
Only a few people remained at the lobby doors, pressing against those in front of them. Some were looking back, wide-eyed, at the inexplicable chaos.