Billy stood on the threshold, swaying, breathless, shaken by his jackhammer heart, and he was seized by the mad idea that his entire bungalow was now inside the crazy old woman's purse. Which made no sense. The bottomless purse was back there in the kitchen, on the table. The purse could not be inside the house at the same time that the house was inside the purse. Could it?
He felt dizzy, confused, nauseous.
He had always known everything worth knowing. Or thought he did. Now he knew better.
He didn't dare venture out of the bungalow into the unremitting blackness. He sensed no haven within that coaly gloom. And he knew instinctively that, if he took one step into the frigid darkness, he would not be able to turn back. One step, and he would fall into the same terrible void that he had felt within the hag's purse: down and down, forever down.
A hiss.
The beast was behind him.
Whimpering wordlessly, Billy Neeks turned from the horrifying emptiness beyond his house, looked back into the living room, where the demon was waiting for him, and cried out when he saw that it had grown bigger than it had been a moment ago. Much bigger. Three feet tall instead of one. Broader in the shoulders. More muscular arms. Thicker legs. Bigger hands and longer claws. The repulsive creature was not as close as he had expected, not on top of him, but standing in the middle of the small living room, watching him with predatory interest, grinning, taunting him merely by choosing not to end the confrontation quickly.
The disparity between the warm air in the house and the freezing air outside generated a draft that sucked the door shut behind Billy. It closed with a bang.
Hissing, the demon took a step forward. When it moved, Billy could hear its gnarly skeleton and oozing flesh work one against the other like the parts of a grease-clogged machine in ill repair.
He backed away from it, heading around the room toward the short hall that led to the bedroom.
The repugnant apparition followed, casting a hellish shadow that was somehow even more grotesque than it should have been, as if it were thrown not by the monster's malformed body but by its more hideously malformed soul. Perhaps aware that its shadow was wrong, perhaps unwilling to consider the meaning of its twisted silhouette, the beast purposefully knocked over the floor lamp as it stalked Billy, and in the influx of shadows, it proceeded more confidently and more eagerly, as if darkness greased its way.
At the entrance to the hallway, Billy stopped edging sideways, bolted flat-out for his bedroom, reached it, and slammed the door behind him. He twisted the latch with no illusions of having found sanctuary. The creature would smash through that flimsy barrier with no difficulty. Billy only hoped to reach the nightstand where he kept a Smith & Wesson.357 Magnum, and indeed he got it with time to spare.
The gun was smaller than he remembered. He told himself that it seemed inadequate only because the enemy was so formidable. The weapon would prove plenty big enough when he squeezed the trigger. But it still seemed small. Virtually a toy.
With the loaded.357 held in both hands and aimed at the door, he wondered if he should fire through the barrier or wait until the beast burst inside.
The demon resolved the issue by exploding through the locked door in a shower of splinters and mangled hinges.
It was bigger still, more than six feet tall, bigger than Billy, a gigantic and loathsome creature that, more than ever, appeared to be constructed of filth, wads of mucus, tangled hair, fungus, and the putrescent bits and pieces of cadavers. Redolent of rotten eggs, with its multiplicitous white eyes now as radiant as incandescent bulbs, it lurched inexorably toward Billy, not even hesitating when he pulled the trigger of the.357 and pumped six rounds into it.
Who or what had that old crone been, for God's sake? She was no ordinary senior citizen, living on Social Security, paying a visit to her butcher's shop, looking forward to bingo on Saturday night. Hell no. No way. What kind of crazy woman carried such a strange purse and kept such a thing as this at her command? What kind of bitch, what kind of bitch? A witch?
Of course, a witch.
At last, backed into a corner, with the creature looming over him, the empty gun still clutched in his left hand, the scratches and bites burning in his right hand, Billy really knew for the first time what it meant to be a defenseless victim. When the hulking, unnameable entity put its massive saber-clawed hands upon him — one on his shoulder, one on his chest — Billy peed in his pants and was at once reduced to the pitiable condition of a weak, helpless, and frightened child.
He was sure that the demon was going to tear him apart, crack his spine, decapitate him, and suck the marrow out of his bones, but instead it lowered its malformed face to his throat and put its gummy lips against his throbbing carotid artery. For one wild moment, Billy thought it was kissing him. Then he felt its cold tongue lick his throat from collarbone to jawline, and he felt as if he'd been stung by a hundred needles. Sudden and complete paralysis ensued.
The creature lifted its head and studied his face. Its breath stank worse than the graveyard odor exuded by its repellent flesh. Unable to close his eyes, in the grip of a paralysis so complete that he could not even blink, Billy stared into the demon's maw and saw its moon-white, prickled tongue.
The beast stepped back. Unsupported, Billy dropped limply to the floor. Though he strained, he could not move a single finger.
Grabbing a handful of Billy's well-oiled hair, the beast began to drag him out of the bedroom. He could not resist. He could not even protest, because his voice was as frozen as the rest of him.
He could see nothing but what moved past his fixed gaze, for he could neither turn his head nor roll his eyes. He had glimpses of furniture past which he was dragged, and he could see the walls and the ceiling above, over which shadows cavorted. When he rolled onto his stomach, he felt no pain in his cruelly twisted hair, and thereafter he could see only the floor in front of his face and the demon's clawed black feet as it trod heavily toward the kitchen, where the chase had begun.
Billy's vision blurred, cleared, blurred again, and he thought his failing sight was related to his paralysis. Then he understood that copious but unfelt tears were pouring from his eyes, streaming down his face. In all his mean and hateful life, he had no memory of having wept before.
He knew what was going to happen to him.
In his racing, fear-swollen heart, he knew.
The stinking, oozing beast dragged him rudely through the dining room, banging him against the table and chairs. It took him into the kitchen, pulling him through spilled beer, over a carpet of scattered Doritos. The thing plucked the old woman's huge black purse from the table and put it on the floor within Billy's view. The unzippered mouth of the bag yawned wide.
The demon was noticeably smaller now, at least in its legs and torso and head, although the arm — with which it held fast to Billy — remained enormous and powerful. With horror and amazement, but not with much surprise, Billy watched the creature crawl into the purse, shrinking as it went. Then it pulled him in after it.