If anyone else had been speaking, D’Agosta would have suspected a joke. Or madness. “Right,” he said. “How long ago was this?”
“I saw it a few minutes ago, just before the power went out. I shot at it once, then followed it down the hall after the lights went. I got off another shot, but my light wasn’t steady and I missed it.. I went down to reconnoiter just now. The hall dead-ends, and the thing has vanished. The only way out is the stairwell leading up to you. It may be hiding in the stairwell, or maybe, if you’re lucky, it’s gone to a different floor. All I know is that it hasn’t come back this way.”
D’Agosta swallowed.
“If you can get into the basement safely, do it. Meet up with me here. These blueprints seem to show the way out. We’ll talk again once you’re in a more secure place. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said D’Agosta.
“Vincent? There’s something else.”
“What now?”
“This creature can open and close doors.”
D’Agosta holstered his radio, licked his lips, and looked back toward the group of people. Most were sitting on the floor, stunned, but a few were trying to help light the armload of candles the lanky guy had scrounged.
D’Agosta spoke to the group as softly as he could. “All of you, move over here and get down against the wall. Put those candles out.”
[338] “What is it?” somebody cried. D’Agosta recognized the voice as Wright’s.
“Quiet. Do as I say. You, what’s your name, Smithback, drop that and get over here.”
D’Agosta’s radio buzzed into speech as he did a quick visual sweep of the Hall with his flashlight. The remote corners of the hall were so black they seemed to eat the beam of his light. In the center of the hall a few candles were lit next to a still form. Pound and somebody else were bending over it.
“Pound!” he called out. “Both of you. Put out those candles and get back over here!”
“But he’s still alive—”
“Get back now!”He turned to the crowd that was huddling behind him. “None of you move or make a sound. Bailey and Ippolito, bring those shotguns and follow me.”
“Did you hear that? Why do they need their guns!” cried Wright.
Recognizing Coffey’s voice on the radio, D’Agosta switched if off with a brusque movement. Moving carefully, flashlights probing the darkness ahead of them, the group crept toward the center of the Hall. D’Agosta played his beam along the wall, found the service area, the dark outlines of the stairwell door. It was closed. He thought he smelled something strange in the air: a peculiar, rotten odor he couldn’t place. But the room stunk to begin with. Half the damn guests must have lost control of their plumbing when the lights failed.
He led the way into the service area, then stopped. “According to Pendergast, there’s a creature, an animal, maybe in this stairwell,” he whispered.
“According to Pendergast,” said Ippolito sarcastically under his breath.
“Stow that shit, Ippolito. Now listen up. We can’t stay here waiting in the dark. We’re gonna go in nice and easy. Okay? Do it by the numbers. Safeties off, shells in the chambers. Bailey, you’re gonna open the door, [339] then cover us with the light, fast. Ippolito, you’ll cover the upward staircase and I’ll cover the down. If you see a person, demand identification and shoot if you don’t get it. If you see anything else, shoot immediately. We move on my signal.”
D’Agosta switched off his flashlight, slipped it in a pocket, and tightened his grip on the shotgun. Then he nodded for Bailey to direct his own light onto the stairwell door. D’Agosta closed his eyes and murmured a brief prayer in the close darkness. Then he gave the signal.
Ippolito moved to the side of the door while Bailey yanked it open. D’Agosta and Ippolito rushed in, Bailey behind them, sweeping the light in a quick semicircle.
A horrible stench awaited them inside the stairwell. D’Agosta took a few steps down into the darkness, sensed a sudden movement abovehim, and heard an unearthly, throaty growl that turned his knees to putty, followed by a dull, slapping sound, like the smacking of a damp towel against the floor. Then wet things were hitting the wall around him and gobs of moisture splattered his face. He spun around and fired at something large and dark. The light was gyrating wildly. “Shit!” he heard Bailey wail.
“Bailey! Don’t let it go into the Hall!” He fired into the darkness, again and again, up the stairwell and down, until he was pumping an empty chamber. The acrid smell of gunpowder blended with the nauseating reek as screams resounded in the Hall of the Heavens.
D’Agosta stumbled up the stairs to the landing, almost tripped over something, and moved into the Hall. “Bailey, where is it?” he yelled as he jammed shells into his shotgun, temporarily blinded by the muzzle flare.
“I don’t know!” Bailey shouted. “I can’t see!” “Did it go down or through?” Two shells in the shotgun. Three...
“I don’t know! I don’t know!”
D’Agosta pulled out his flashlight and shone it on [340] Bailey. The officer was soaked in thick clots of blood. Pieces of flesh were in his hair, hanging from his eyebrows. He was wiping his eyes. A hideous smell hung in the air.
“I’m fine,” Bailey reassured D’Agosta. “I think. I just got all this shit on my face, I can’t see.”
D’Agosta swept the light around the room in a fast arc, the shotgun braced against his thigh. The group, huddled together against the wall, blinked in terror. He turned the light back toward the stairwell, and saw Ippolito, or what was left of him, lying partway on the landing, dark blood rapidly spreading from his torn gut.
The thing had been waiting for them just a few steps up from the landing. But where the fuck was it now?He shined the light in desperate circles around the Hall. It was gone—the huge space was still.
No. Something wasmoving in the center of the Hall. The light was dim at that distance, but D’Agosta could see a large, dark shape crouched over the injured man on the dance floor, lunging downward with odd, jerking motions. D’Agosta heard the man wail once—then there was a faint crunching noise and silence. D’Agosta propped the flashlight in his armpit, raised his gun, aimed, and squeezed the trigger.
There was a flash and a roar. Screams erupted from the huddled group. Two more shots and the chamber was again empty.
He reached for more shells, came up empty, dropped the shotgun and drew his service revolver. “Bailey!” he yelled. “Get over there fast, get everyone together and prepare to move.” He swept the light across the floor of the Hall, but the shape was gone. He moved carefully toward the body. At ten feet, he saw the one thing he’d wanted not to see: the split skull and the brains spread across the floor. A bloody track led into the exhibition. Whatever it was had rushed inside to escape the shotgun blast. It wouldn’t stay there long.
D’Agosta leaped up, raced around the columns, and [341] yanked one of the heavy wooden exhibition doors free. With a grunt, he slammed it to, then raced over to the far side. There was a noise inside the exhibition, a swift heavy tread. He slammed the second door shut and heard the latch fall. Then the doors shuddered as something heavy hit them.
“Bailey!” he yelled. “Get everyone down the stairwell!”
The pounding grew stronger, and D’Agosta backed up involuntarily. The wood of the door began to splinter.
As he aimed his gun toward the door, he heard screams and shouts behind him. They’d seen Ippolito. He heard Bailey’s voice raised in argument with Wright. There was a sudden shudder and a great crack opened at the base of the door.
D’Agosta ran across the room. “Down the stairs, now! Don’t look back!”
“No,” screamed Wright, who was blocking the stairwell. “Look at Ippolito! I’m not going down there!”
“There’s a way out!” shouted D’Agosta.
“No there isn’t. But through the exhibition, and—”
“There’s something inthe exhibition!” D’Agosta yelled. “Now get going!”
Bailey moved Wright forcibly aside and started pushing people through the door, even as they cried and stumbled across the body of Ippolito. At least the Mayor seems calm, D’Agosta thought. Probably saw worse than this at his last press conference.