Dread had reached the edge of the encampment. He stopped on ground that had been torn and churned by fleeing refugees and lifted his hands as though he would take the entire huge throng in his arms. His face was a thing of shadows, the human features plain but somehow inconstant, the eyes blank white crescents. Only the teeth were clear—a huge, avid grin. The shape radiated such triumphant, heedless, blood-smeared power that the nearest refugees, untouched, fell down shrieking and writhing.
Martine was not even looking. She had shoved her face against Paul's arm. "This must be . . . the terror the Other feels," she moaned.
Paul thought it seemed pointless to analyze anything. It was the end, after all.
"Oh, you're all so clever." Dread's laughing voice was in every ear. "But I know you're here somewhere." The dead white eyes swept across the whimpering throng.
He's looking for us. Paul's heart was skipping, staggering. He knows we're here, but he's not sure where.
The shadow-man and everything around him suddenly grew dim.
And I'm going blind like Martine. . . .
Blind?
The air was growing thick, foggy. Paul tried to blink it away but the fog was not in him but before him, a sticky density forming above the shimmering pit and around them all. At first he thought it was something of Dread's doing, the metaphorical air being sucked from an entire world, but the dark figure seemed disconcerted, lifting his hands in front of his face, fingers twitching as if to tear away a curtain.
"But I crushed you!" Dread snarled. "You can't stop me now!"
There was a curtain, Paul saw in astonishment—a wall of rapidly thickening mist forming between Dread and his victims. The gossamer-thin, translucent barrier rapidly grew thicker, a hemispherical wall of cloud coagulating all over the Well, transparent enough that the carbon-black figure of Dread could still be seen through it, thick enough to reflect some of the dull shimmer from the pit. The shadow-man lunged forward, scrabbling at the solidifying fog, and the cloud strands stretched to what seemed the breaking point . . . but they did not break.
Dread's scream of frustration rattled in Paul's skull, made him crouch shivering on the ground. All around him refugees were running mad, knocking each other down, trying to escape something that was in their heads. The cry rose until Paul thought his brains would boil, until he felt sure there must be blood running from his nose and ears, then it trailed off like storm winds passing.
For a moment there was silence. Inside the dome of cloud it was the silence not just of pain but of astonishment, of a last-minute reprieve beyond all hope.
Martine's voice was faint with agony and shock. "I . . . I can feel such . . . oh, my God! The Other has put up a last-ditch defense, but it has . . . little strength left."
The figure behind the wall of cloud had grown very still.
This can't last, The icy words pricked at Paul's ears. He could hear children sobbing all around him, unable to escape the voice of the bogeyman. "It's only a matter of time."
The dark figure spread his hands again, pressed them against the barrier. The nearest refugees wept and tried to force themselves farther away, but Dread was making no attempt to break through this time. "I know you're there—all of you." He paused. "You, Martine. We've shared something, sweetness. You know what I mean."
She had fallen on her face. Paul put his hand on her back, felt the convulsive shudders.
"It's going to be very bad if you make me wait," Dread murmured. "Pain. And not just for you, little Martine. Screaming—oh, there will plenty of screaming. Why don't you just come to me now and save the innocent ones?"
"No," she said, but it was a hollow whisper that even Paul could barely hear.
"Come out," said the dark shape. "I'll show you those secret places again. Those places in you that you didn't think anyone could find. You know it's going to happen. Why wait? The fear will only get worse." The voice deepened, turned horribly seductive. "Just come to me now, sweet Martine. I'll release you. You won't have to be afraid any more."
To Paul's horror she began to squirm toward the barrier on her stomach. He grabbed her waist to hold her back, but whatever pulled at her was strong, horribly strong. Flailing, sobbing, she fought him until he had to wrap both his arms and legs around her. T4b shoved his way through the crush of bodies and grabbed her shoulders and at last Martine stopped struggling. She wept harder now, her body shivering convulsively. Paul put his face against her cheek and held her tightly, murmured meaningless assurances in her ear.
"Well," said Dread. "Then we'll have to play it a different way," He moved sideways along the barrier, swift as a spider on a web, then stopped. "Just because I'm on the outside doesn't mean I can't touch you at all. Doesn't mean I can't make it . . . interesting. This little wall the operating system threw together may keep me out for a few minutes—but it also means you're locked in with some old friends of yours." He pressed his fingers against the barrier, tenting the net of mists inward. "They're everywhere, aren't they? The whole network is rotten with the things. Harmless enough, this lot." He chuckled. "Until I wake them up."
In the puzzled hush that followed, Paul pulled Martine up into a sitting position but kept her wrapped firmly in his arms. A thin scream floated up from farther down the shoreline, then another and another until a chorus of shrieking filled the air. That part of the crowd began to shove outward in all directions, a frenzied rush like rats off a burning ship. Something was growing at the center of the disturbance, a bizarre and complicated shape swelling up and out as if unfolding out of the dry dust.
No, Paul saw, and his guts twisted. Two shapes. He could hear Dread laughing inside his head, T4b cursing helplessly behind him. Martine hung in his arms like an empty sack.
Jack Sprat and his wife blossomed outward in a sprawling explosion of flesh until they towered over the other refugees. Sprat's bony fingers twisted and stretched like fast-growing twigs. His legs lengthened, his toes humped and clawed, even his face stretched and distorted until he was as tall and gnarl-limbed as an old tree. He reached out his skeletal claws and snatched up a squealing shape covered in fur and wearing a pink ribbon, then tore it to pieces, raining bits down on the refugees struggling to escape.
Sprat's wife was expanding like a fairground balloon, her arms and legs remaining doll-tiny while the great gross body spread and crushed the helpless creatures packed in around her. The head began to disappear in the humped inflation of shoulders, until all that could be seen was a huge hippopotamus mouth full of crooked teeth, gaping on the lumpy bosom. She leaned, folding like a great pudding, then came back up with a dozen more fairy-tale, figures in her maw. She swallowed slowly. Her neck distended, small shapes still moving inside it.
"Where is the princess?" Jack Sprat had no eyes now, only a crease across the narrowest part of his head.
"The princess!" his wife belched out. A small, sodden creature tried to escape her mouth but was sucked back in and vigorously chewed. "Our pretty, tasty princess!"