All right! Alan thought. I can beat it!
He pushed the etagere out of the way and quick-crawled to the door, positioning himself to the right of the hole. The little holes had merged into one hole now—a little arch about eighteen inches wide and about four inches high. He'd barely set himself when a third tentacle slithered through the near edge. He severed it with a single chop and that tip joined its brother on the floor. A fourth tentacle darted in, then a fifth. Alan hacked at them as soon as they appeared and they withdrew, wounded.
"Yes!" he said, the word hissing softly between his teeth. "Keep 'em coming, you bastards! It's circumcision time! Let's see if you've got more tentacles than I've got chops!"
He was pumped. He knew he was acting a little bit crazy, but that was because he was feeling a little bit crazy. Maybe he'd been in that wheelchair too long. Whatever, here he was, free of it, weapon in hand, defending Toad Hall. He hadn't felt this alive in years.
Suddenly half a dozen fresh tentacles surged through at once, rearing up, reaching for his arms, his face. He swung wildly at them, catching one in mid air, one against the door. He was taking a bead on another when he heard buzzing wings and gnashing teeth above and behind him.
The bugs!
Instinctively, he ducked, but too late. Pain ripped through his left ear. He touched a hand to the side of his face. It came away red. Alan turned and grabbed the billy. Now he had a weapon in each hand—hatchet in right, club in left—and he was eager to use them. The pain and the blood from his ear had released something within him. His fear was gone, replaced by a seething rage at these creatures who dared to invade his home and threaten the people he loved.
Damn you! Damn you all to hell!
He chopped at an extended tentacle, severing its tip, then heard the buzz again and swung blindly at the air.
And connected. The broken, oozing body of the chew wasp—its jaws still smeared with blood from Alan's ear—bounced off the door and fell to the floor. Immediately, one of the tentacles coiled around its squirming form and yanked it outside.
Alan chopped at a particularly thick tentacle, severing it half way through. As he drew back to finish the job, something slammed against his back, shooting a blaze of pain through his right shoulder. He grunted with the sudden agony. As wings buzzed furiously by his ear, he dropped the billy and reached over his shoulder. When his questing fingers found the horny beak piercing his flesh, he knew a spearhead was trying to make him its next meal. It must have come in at an angle and glanced off his shoulder blade. A direct hit would have put it right through to his chest cavity, collapsing his right lung and leaving him with a sucking chest wound. He had to get it out before it dug itself deeper and finished the job.
Alan wrapped his fingers around the twisting, gnawing beak and yanked. He was rewarded by another eruption of vision-dimming pain, but the spearhead came free. It writhed and twisted and wriggled and flapped madly as he brought it around front. But as he raised his hatchet to chop it in half, the tentacle he'd wounded seconds ago coiled around his right wrist and wrenched it toward the door. He groaned as the sudden movement sent a bolt of pain lancing down his arm from the shoulder wound. His fingers went numb momentarily; he lost his grip on the hatchet handle and dropped it. But he couldn't worry about that now. He had to get his right hand free. Now. So Alan struck at the tentacle with the only weapon he had—the bug writhing in his left hand.
Using the spearhead's pointed beak as a knife, he stabbed and slashed madly, repeatedly. Desperate breaths hissed between his teeth. This was out of hand now. He'd lost the high ground and was on the defensive. He spotted a slew of new tentacles sliding under the door—how many did this thing have?
He had to retreat. He was going to be in very big trouble if he didn't pull free in the next few seconds and get out of reach.
He took a big swing with the spearhead, angling it so it cut into the open, oozing area he'd previously damaged with the hatchet. As the bug's sharp beak pierced through the far side, Alan pushed it deeper, cramming it into the tissues. It must have struck a vital nerve trunk because the distal end of the tentacle went into spasm, coiling and uncoiling wildly.
Alan pulled free of its grasp and immediately rolled away from the door. Leaving his wheelchair behind, he rose to his hands and knees and scrambled across the foyer floor toward the living room.
He almost made it.
Two strong, healthy legs would have got him to safety. He cursed his legs as they slumped beneath him, slowing him down. His right arm was letting him down too. He had to depend on his arms for a good part of his speed, but the right one was wounded. His left hand was just inches from the living room carpet when he felt something coil about his ankle. Even then, a good strong kick might have freed him, but his legs didn't have a good strong kick in them. He realized then that he should have tried for the stairs. If he'd have been able to reach the newel post of the bannister he'd have had something to hold on to.
As the tentacle dragged him back, Alan clawed at the marble floor, looking for a crack, a seam, anything to hold on to, but there was nothing. It had been too expertly installed. He kicked feebly with his free leg but then felt another tentacle wrap around that ankle and worm its way up to his thigh.
And now he was being dragged back at a faster rate.
He spotted his hatchet where he'd dropped it. He tried to reach it. He stretched his good arm and fingers to the limit, until he thought his shoulder would dislocate, but could not get near it. Like a departing sailor gazing at his home port from the stern of a ship, he watched the hatchet slip further and further out of reach.
Next came his wheelchair. He grabbed at that, caught hold of a foot rest but it simply rolled with him. He clutched it because it was all he had to hold on to.
And then other tentacles, Alan couldn't count how many, looped and coiled around his legs, and he couldn't kick free now, even if he'd had two good legs. He was helpless. Utterly helpless.
I am going to die.
Although he never stopped struggling against the inexorable tug of the tentacles, the realization was a sudden cold weight in his heart. Fear and dread shot through him, but not panic. Mostly there was sadness. Tears sprang into his eyes. Tears for all the things he'd never do, like walking again, or watching Jeffy grow up, or growing old with Sylvia, but most of all, for the way he'd be dying. He'd never feared the moment, but then he'd always imagined the moment arriving when he was gray and withered and bedfast and that he'd welcome it with open arms.
The tentacles dragged his legs through the opening at the bottom of the door. The jagged wood raked the backs of his thighs and then dug into the flesh of his hips and buttocks as he became wedged into the opening.
He wasn't going to fit through. At least not in one piece.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, I don't want to die like this!
And suddenly amid the fear and the grief and the pain he realized that he had to die a certain way. He'd been given no choice in how death was coming to him but he had something to say about how he met it.
Silently.
He groaned as the traction on his legs increased and the ligaments and tendons and skin and muscles began to stretch past their tolerances.
Quiet!
He reached up and grabbed the thin cotton blanket from the wheelchair and stuffed it deep into his mouth, gagging as the fabric brushed the back of his throat.
Good. Gag. Then he couldn't scream. And he mustn't scream.
Oh God, the pain!
He had to be quiet because if he let the pain and fear out in a scream, Sylvia would wake and come for him…he knew her, knew if she thought he was in danger, she wouldn't hesitate, she'd charge, she'd wade through a storm of bugs and tentacles to get to him…