Something was framed in the dusty gap of the entrance. It was Gower, and it was more than Gower. He hung for a moment suspended in the otherwise empty doorway, swaying left and right. Then he emerged more fully and the watchers saw the huge, leprous trunk which propelled him. The thing — indeed ‘the Other’ — had entered his back in a solid shaft of matter, but inside Gower its massive pseudopod of vampire flesh had branched, following his pipes and conduits to several exits. Tentacles writhed from his gaping mouth and nostrils, the sockets of his dislocated eyes, his ruptured ears. And even as Roberts and Newton clambered in a frenzy of terror up the last few steps from the ramp, so Gower’s entire front burst open, revealing a lashing nest of crimson, groping worms!
‘Jesus!’ Guy Roberts shouted then, his voice a sand-papered howl of horror and hatred. ‘Sweet J-e-s-u-s!’
He aimed his hose down the ramp. ‘Goodbye, Simon. God grant you peace!’
Liquid fire roared its rage, ran like a flood down the ramp, hurled itself in a fireball at the suspended man and the beast-thing holding him upright. The great pseudopod was instantly retracted — Gower with it, snatched back like a rag doll — and Roberts aimed his hose directly at the doorway at the foot of the steps. He turned the valve up full, and a shimmering jet of heat blasted its way into the cellar, fanning out inside the labyrinth of vaults into every niche and corner. For a count of five Roberts held it. Then came the first explosion.
Down went the entrance in a massive shuddering of earth. A shockwave of lashing heat hurled dirt and pebbles up the ramp, knocking Roberts and Newton off their feet. Roberts’s finger automatically came off the trigger. His weapon smoked hot but silent in his hands. And crump! crump! crump! came evenly spaced, muffled concussions from deep in the earth, each one shaking the ground with pile-driver power.
Faster came the underground explosions, occurring in sporadic bursts, occasionally twinned, as the planted charges reacted to the heat and added to the unseen inferno. Newton got up and helped Roberts to his feet. They stumbled clear of the house, took up positions with Layard and Jordan, a man to each of the four corners but standing well back. The old barn, still blazing, began to vibrate as if itself alive and suffering its death agonies. Finally it shook itself to pieces and slid down into the suddenly seething earth. For a moment a lashing tentacle reached up from the shuddering foundations to a height of some twenty feet, then collapsed and was sucked back down into the quaking, liquefying quag of earth and fire.
Ken Layard was closest to that area. He ran raggedly away from the house, put distance between himself and the barn, too, before stumbling to a halt and staring with wide eyes and gaping mouth at the upstairs windows of the main building. Then he beckoned to Roberts to come and join him.
‘Look!’ Layard yelled, over the sound of subterranean thunder and the hiss and crackle of fire. They both stared at the house. Framed in a second-floor window, the figure of a mature woman stood with her arms held high, almost in an attitude of supplication. ‘Bodescu’s mother,’ Roberts said. ‘It can only be her: Georgina Bodescu — God help her!’
A corner of the house collapsed, sank into the earth in ruins. Where it went down, a geyser of fire spouted high as the roof, hurling broken bricks and mortar with it.
There were more explosions and the entire house shuddered. It was visibly settling on its foundations, cracks spreading across its walls, chimneys tottering. The four watchers backed off further yet, Layard dragging Ben Trask with him. Then Layard noticed the truck where it stood on the drive, jolting about on its own suspension.
He went to get it, but Guy Roberts stayed where he was, stood over Trask and continued to watch the figure of the woman at the window.
She hadn’t changed her position. She stumbled a little now and then as the house settled, but always regained her pose, arms raised on high and head thrown back, so that it seemed to Roberts that indeed she talked to God. Telling Him what? Asking for what? Forgiveness for her son? A merciful release for herself?