I nodded my head. Holly was nearest the staircase; that meant she would have to walk backward, arms looped under Vernon’s shoulders, with me gripping his legs, following behind. Vernon himself, eyes half open, seemed scarcely aware of what was going on. He worried me. I feared that he might suddenly call out and attract unwelcome attention.
Holly shuffled backward; I shuffled after. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the papers on the desk fluttering, fluttering….
Down along the aisle we went, between the hanging coats, pressing each foot down with tender, soundless care. Steadily we drew closer to the stairwell doors.
“Say,” a voice said in my ear, “this is exciting. I almost think you might make it.”
The skull! I rolled my eyes in dismay, biting the corner of my lip. Would his presence disturb the Poltergeist? I looked over at the desk, at the gently ruffling papers.
“Unless Holly trips and drops little Bobby and his head knocks on the floor with a whopping great thud,” the ghost continued amiably, “like a tufty coconut cracking on a rock. I honestly think this might happen. Look at the way her little hands are slipping….”
It was true. Holly had stopped, and altered her grip under Vernon’s armpits. Her face was as pale as I’d ever seen it. But we weren’t far from the doors.
“I call this a nice refreshing change,” the skull said. “You can’t talk back! Or reach around to turn my tap off. Means I can tell you what I think of you, without you giving me any lip.”
We shuffled on. I squinted frantically across the room.
It was okay. On the desk, nothing had changed.
“Don’t worry,” the skull said. “It’s not interested in me. We entities, by and large, keep ourselves to ourselves. It won’t pay any attention to what I do.”
I breathed out with relief. And just then Holly nudged a coat with her elbow, making its hanger scrape gently on the rail.
“That, on the other hand…”
My eyes flipped around; I looked at the pile of papers.
They were suddenly very still.
Holly and I exchanged glances. We waited. I counted to thirty in my head, forcing my breathing to remain calm. The room was dark and silent. Nothing happened. The papers didn’t move.
I expelled air very, very slowly. We tiptoed on.
“Hey, maybe you’re okay now!” the skull said. “Maybe it’s gone.”
An empty coat hanger on a rack on the other side of the room spun up and over in a whizzing 360-degree turn, then rocked back and forth with ever smaller movements until it was once again quite still.
“It hasn’t, you know. I was just kidding.”
We froze, watched the space. Again everything was still. I nodded to Holly. Grimly, grappling Vernon tighter, moving slightly faster, we inched along the aisle.
Away across the room, a ting of metal. One of the lights in the ceiling swung softly in the darkness. Holly started to slow, but I shook my head and we redoubled our pace toward the stairs.
We needed to hurry now. We needed to get out.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s over there,” the skull said in my ear. “Or by the coats…”
I gritted my teeth. I knew what it was going to say.
“Truth is, it’s everywhere. It’s right on top of us. It coils around us like a snake. We’re all inside it. It has already swallowed us whole.”
All at once a squealing screech of feedback came from the speakers in the ceiling, followed by a low-level, crackling hum. Holly and I both jumped. Behind Holly’s head a pair of blue pajamas on a rail jerked too, as if someone was in them, legs bending, arms jabbing outward in a brief, appalling spasm.
Almost as fast as it had started, the energy went out of it. The pajamas hung limp, without animation.
A moment later we slammed through the swinging doors into the pitch darkness of the back stairs.
I dropped Vernon’s leg, flipped a penlight from my belt, and shoved it between my teeth. The light showed Holly, sagging against the wall, easing Vernon to the ground.
“Oh, God…” she said. “Oh, God…”
“We can’t stop here, Hol,” I hissed. “We’ve got to move. Pick him up! Come on!”
“But, Lucy—”
“Just do it!”
Onward, stumbling, down the stairs, contained within our bobbing sphere of light. We weren’t trying for quiet anymore, and we weren’t attempting to suppress the fear that, choking, rose within us. Holly was sobbing as she went; Bobby Vernon’s head bounced side to side as we careered against the walls.
We reached the turn. Behind us, the doors at the top burst open, smashing back against the wall. Their panels of glass shattered; fragments cascaded down the steps, rained past us into the dark. A squall of air buffeted against us as we collapsed onto the landing below.
“In there!” I’d been planning to keep going down, all the way to the ground floor, but I didn’t want to be stuck in the stairwell now. I nodded toward the door leading back into the store. Holly shouldered her way through—we entered the silence and darkness of Kitchenware at the far end of the first floor.
“Holly,” I whispered, “you’re tired. Swap with me. Let me go in front now.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Side by side, then.” The aisle was wide enough for us to go abreast. It wasn’t too far. Through Kitchenware, then Ladies’ Fashions, then down the main stairs to the ground floor—that’s all we had to do.
Far off I heard voices calling us. Living voices—Lockwood, George…
“Don’t answer them,” I said. “Keep silent.”
We went as fast as we could. I kept expecting the door behind us to crash open, as if the ghost were chasing us. But Poltergeists don’t work that way.
When we were beside a stack of colanders, something slapped me in the face.
I cried out, dropping my flashlight, letting go of Vernon’s legs. He moaned, thrashed in Holly’s grip.
Another slap, stinging across my cheek. Cursing, I drew my sword, swung it around me in a wild sweep. Nothing.
In the next aisle, something smashed against saucepans.
Holly gave a yelp; a red mark bloomed like a flower on her cheekbone.
There’s only one good thing about Poltergeists: no ectoplasm, so you can’t get ghost-touch, even when you’re slapped around by them. It almost makes up for the higher than average chance of being brained by a sofa or skewered by a banister rail. We snatched Vernon up, staggered on.
Somewhere behind, a clattering; dozens of utensils cascading to the floor. And now came a horrendous din, a tumbling of tortured metal, peppered with grunts and snarls, as if a great beast was thrashing and writhing in their midst.
But the beast was ahead of us too. Farther along our aisle: a rack of knives of every size and shape. They quivered and trembled on their hooks.
Uh-oh.
I pulled us out of the aisle and down along a parallel one, just as the weapons burst free. Down behind a rack of chinaware we fell, rolling over in a heap as dozens of carving knives screamed through the air, embedding themselves in the floor around us, splintering plates, bouncing off copper pots.
Bobby Vernon opened an eye. “Ow! Careful. I’m in pain here, you realize.”
“You’ll be a darn sight worse off shortly,” I snarled, “if you don’t shut up. Come on, Holly! Get up! We’re doing so well.”
“What would doing badly look like?”
Feedback welled up through the sound system, vibrating jaggedly through the nerves of our teeth. We heard bangs and screams from elsewhere in the building. Somewhere ahead, at the entrance to Ladies’ Fashions, came an almighty tearing, a wrenching sound that told of something heavy and substantial being uprooted from the floor.