People began to scream, and a few ran toward the exits at the back of the theater.
Someone yelled, 'Earthquake!'
An earthquake didn't explain it, of course, and it wasn't likely that anyone believed that explanation. But that word, much dreaded in California since the Northridge temblor, stoked the panic. More seats — those in the second row — erupted from the floor: bolts snapped, metal shredded, concrete burst.
It was, Laura thought, as if some gigantic invisible best had entered at the front of the theater and was making its way toward them, destroying everything in its path.
'Let's get out of here,' Earl shouted, although he knew as well as she did that they could not run from this thing, whatever it was.
Melanie had ceased struggling. She was limp, like a pile of knotted rags, so limp that she might have been dead. The projectionist switched off his machinery and turned up the house lights. Everyone but Laura, Melanie, and Earl had surged to the back of the theater, and half the audience had already spilled out into the lobby.
Heart jackhammering, Laura scooped Melanie into her arms and stumbled along the row, into the aisle, with Earl following close behind her.
Now seats were exploding into the air from the fourth row and crashing backward into the demolished screen with thunderous impact. But the worst sound was coming from the emergency-exit doors that flanked the screen. They swung open and slammed shut, again and again, banging back and forth with such tremendous force that their pneumatic cylinders, which should have ensured a soft closing every time, could not cope.
Laura saw not doors but flapping mouths, hungry mouths, and she knew that if she was foolish enough to try to escape through those exits, she would find herself stepping not into the theater parking lot but into the gullet of some unimaginably foul beast. Crazy thought. Insane. She was teetering on the brink of mindless panic.
If she had not experienced the poltergeist phenomena on a smaller scale in her own kitchen, she would have been unhinged by the sight before her. What was it? What was It? And why the hell did it want Melanie?
Dan knew. At least he knew part of it.
But it didn't matter what he knew, because he couldn't help them now. Laura doubted that she would ever see him again.
Considering that she was hysterical and already emotionally overcharged, the thought of never seeing Haldane again hit her harder than seemed possible.
She had no sooner reached the aisle than her knees began to buckle under the combined weight of her terror and Melanie. Earl jammed his revolver back into its holster and took the girl out of Laura's arms.
Only a few people remained at the lobby doors, pressing against those in front of them. Some were looking back, wide-eyed, at the inexplicable chaos.
Laura and Earl took only a few steps along that same carpeted route of escape before seats stopped exploding into the air behind them — and erupted, instead, from the rows ahead. After a brief, clumsy, aerial ballet, the mangled seats crashed down into the aisle, blocking it.
Melanie would not be permitted to leave.
Holding the girl in his arms, Earl looked this way and that, unsure of his next move.
Then something shoved him. He staggered backward. Something tore Melanie out of his grip. The girl tumbled along the aisle until she slammed against a row of seats.
Screaming, Laura scurried to her daughter, rolled the girl over, put a hand to her neck. There was a pulse.
'Laura!'
She looked up when she heard her name, and with an enormous rush of relief she saw Dan Haldane. He had entered through the exiting people at the back of the theater. He rushed down the aisle toward them.
He vaulted the ruined seats that the unseen enemy had piled in the aisle, and as he drew nearer, he shouted, 'That's it! Hold her in your arms, shelter her.' He reached Laura and knelt beside her. 'Put yourself between her and It, because I don't think it'll hurt you.
'Why not?'
'I'll explain later,' he said. He turned to Earl, who had gotten to his hands and knees. 'You okay?'
'Yeah. Just bruised.'
Dan got to his feet.
Laura lay in the aisle, among scattered pieces of popcorn and crumpled paper cups and other debris, embracing Melanie, trying to fold herself around the child. She realized that the theater was silent, that the invisible beast was no longer on the rampage. But the air was cold, blood-freezing.
It was still there.
* * *
Dan turned slowly in a circle, waiting for something to happen.
As the silence continued, he said, 'You can't kill yourself unless you kill your mother too. She won't let you do it unless you kill her first.'
Looking up at him, Laura said, 'Who are you talking to?' And then she cried out and pressed closer to Melanie. 'Something's pulling at me! Dan, something's trying to tear me away from her!'
'Fight it.'
She held tightly to Melanie, and for a moment she looked like an epileptic, jerking and twitching in a fit upon the floor.
But the attack ended, and she stopped struggling.
'Gone?' Dan asked.
Gaunt, baffled, she said, 'Yes.'
Dan spoke to the air, for he could sense that the astral body was hovering out there in the theater somewhere. 'She won't let you pry her away just so you can hammer yourself to pieces. She loves you. If she has to, she'll die to protect you.,
Across the theater, three seats were torn loose of their moorings, and were swept up into the air. They whirled and slammed against one another for a half minute before they dropped back to the floor.
'No matter what you think,' Dan said to the psychogeist, 'you don't deserve to die. What you did was horrible, but it wasn't much more than you had to do.'
Silence.
Stillness.
He said, 'Your mother loves you. She wants you to live. That's why she's holding on to you with all her strength.'
A wretched sound from Laura indicated that she understood the whole terrible truth, at last.
At the front of the theater, the crumpled curtains stirred and rose slightly, in a halfhearted attempt to spread themselves into menacing wing-shapes as before, but after a few seconds they sagged into a formless heap.
Earl had gotten to his feet. He stepped beside Dan. Surveying the theater, he said, 'It was the girl herself?'
Dan nodded.
Weeping in shock and grief and fear, Laura cradled her daughter.
The air was still frigid.
Something touched Dan with invisible hands of ice and shoved him backward, but not hard.
'You can't kill yourself. We won't let you kill yourself,' he told the unseen astral body. 'We love you, Melanie. You've never had a chance, and we want to give you a chance.'
Silence.
Earl started to say something, and then several rows down from them the psychogeist rushed along a line of seats, snapping the backs off them as it went, and the fallen curtains did rise this time, and the exit doors began to bang open and shut again, and scores of acoustic ceiling tiles rained down, and a cold keening arose that must have been an astral voice, for it came out of midair and filled the theater at such volume that both Earl and Dan clamped their hands over their ears.
Dan saw Laura wincing, but she didn't let go of Melanie to cover her own ears. She maintained her loving grip, squeezing the girl tight, holding on.
The noise rose to an unbearable level, and Dan thought he had misjudged the girl, thought she was going to bring the roof down on all of them and kill everyone in order to kill herself. But abruptly the cacophony stopped, and the animated wreckage crashed back onto the floor, and the doors stopped slamming open and shut.
One last ceiling tile sailed down, struck the aisle beyond them, and tumbled over twice before coming to rest.