‘It’s not a man,’ he said.
The Samaritan moved ponderously through the lamp-light.
Scootie’s growl escalated into a snarl.
The Samaritan stepped off the curb and splashed through the deep, fast-moving water in the gutter.
‘Get back,’ Tommy said urgently. ‘Back to the house, inside.’
Although his growl had been menacing and he had seemed prepared to attack, Scootie needed no further encouragement to retreat. He whipped around, shot past Tommy, and streaked through the gate that Del was holding open.
Del followed the dog, and Tommy backed through the gate as well, holding the Mossberg in front of him. As the patinated copper panel fell shut Tommy saw the Samaritan in the middle of the street, still heading toward them but not breaking into a run, as if confident that they could not escape.
The gate clacked shut. The electric security lock would buy no more than half a minute, because the Samaritan would be able to climb over the barrier with little trouble.
The portly man would no longer be hampered by his less-than-athletic physique. He would have all the strength and agility of the supernatural entity that had claimed him.
When Tommy reached the courtyard, Del was at the front entrance to the house.
He was surprised that she had been able to fish her keys out of her purse and get the door open so quickly. Evidently Scootie was already inside.
Following Del into the house, Tommy heard the gate rattle out at the street.
He closed the door, fumbled for the thumb-turn, and engaged the deadbolt. ‘Leave the lights off.’
‘This is a house, not a fortress,’ Del said.
‘Ssshhh,’ Tommy cautioned.
The only sounds from the courtyard were rain splattering against quartzite payers, rain chuckling through downspouts, rain snapping against palm fronds.
Del persisted: ‘Tommy, listen, we can’t expect to defend this place like a fort.’
Wet and chilled yet again, weary of running, taking
some courage from the power of the Mossberg and from the door-buster pistol that Del carried, Tommy hushed her. He remembered a night of terror long ago on the South China Sea, when survival had come only after those refugees in the boat had stopped trying to run from the Thai pirates and had fought back.
Twelve-inch-wide, six-foot-tall sidelights flanked the front door. Through those rain-spotted panes, Tommy was able to see a small portion of the courtyard: wetly glimmering light, blades of darkness that were palm fronds.
The flow of time seemed suspended.
No tick.
No tock.
He was gripping the shotgun so tightly that his hands ached, and the muscles began to twitch in his forearms.
Remembering the green reptilian eye in the torn cotton face of the doll, he dreaded meeting the demon again, now that it was no longer merely ten inches tall.
A moving shadow, swift and fluid and less geometric than those cast by the palm trees and ferns, swooped across one pane of glass.
The fat man didn’t knock, didn’t ring the bell, didn’t leave a note and quietly depart, because he wasn’t a good Samaritan any more. He slammed into the door, which shook violently in its frame, slammed into it again so hard that the hinges creaked and the lock mechanism made a half-broken rattling noise, and slammed into it a third time, but still the door held.
Tommy’s hammering heart drove him across the dark foyer and nailed him against the wall opposite the door.
Although the sidelights were too narrow to admit the fat man, he smashed his fist through one of them. Shattered glass rang across the travertine floor.
Tommy squeezed the trigger. Flame flared from the muzzle of the Mossberg, and the deafening roar of gunfire rebounded from the walls of the foyer.
Even though the shot gunned Samaritan reeled back from the broken sidelight, he didn’t scream in pain. He wasn’t a man any more. Pain meant nothing to him.
Her voice hollow and strange in the shivery echo of the blast, Del shouted, ‘No, Tommy, no, this place is just a trap!
Come on!’
With tremendous force, the fat man slammed into the door again. The deadbolt skreeked against the striker plate, and the squeal of shearing metal rose from the tortured hinges, and wood splintered with a dry cracking sound.