"Is that where the dreams are?" Witt said.
"That's where everything is," Tommy-Ray replied, unaware of how much truth he spoke.
The party's over," the Jaff said to Grillo. "Time we went down."
Little had been said between them since Eve's panicked departure. The man had simply sat back down in the seat from which he'd risen to deal with Lamar's mutiny, and waited there while raised voices drifted from below, limos drove up to the front door, took their passengers and left, and—finally—the music stopped. Grillo had made no attempt to slip away. For one, Lamar's slumped body blocked the door, and by the time he'd attempted to move it the terata, indistinct as they now were, would surely have claimed him. For another, and more significantly, he'd come by chance into the company of the first cause, the entity responsible for the mysteries he'd been encountering in Palomo Grove since he'd arrived. Here, slumped before him, was the man who'd shaped the horrors, and by extension therefore comprehended the visions that were loose in the town. To attempt to leave would be a dereliction of duty. Diverting as his short run as Ellen Nguyen's lover had been, he had only one role to play in all of this. He was a reporter; a conduit between the known world and the unknown. If he turned his back on the Jaff he committed a crime worse than any he knew: he failed to be a witness.
Whatever else the man was (insane; lethal; monstrous) he was not what so many of the people Grillo interviewed or investigated in his professional life had proved: a fake. Grillo had only to look around the room at the creatures the Jaff had spawned, or caused to be spawned, to know that he was in the company of a power with the capacity to change the world. He dared not turn his back on such a power. He would go with it wherever it went, and hope to understand its workings better.
The Jaff stood up.
"Make no attempt to intervene," he said to Grillo.
"I won't," Grillo told him. "But let me come with you."
The Jaff looked at him for the first time since Eve's escape. It was too dark for Grillo to see the eyes turned upon him, but he felt them, sharp as needles, probing him.
"Move the body," the Jaff instructed.
Grillo said: "Sure," and moved to the door. He'd needed no further reminder of the Jaff's strength, but picking up Lamar's corpse offered it to him anyhow. The body was wet and hot. His hands, when he dumped it down again, were sticky with the comedian's blood. The feel and smell made Grillo nauseous.
"Just remember..." the Jaff said.
"I know," Grillo replied. "Don't intervene."
"So. Open the door."
Grillo did so. He hadn't been aware of how fetid the room had become until a wave of cool, clean air swept in and over his face.
"Lead on," the Jaff said.
Grillo stepped out on to the landing. The house was completely silent, but it was not empty. At the bottom of the first flight of stairs he saw a small crowd of Rochelle's guests waiting. Their eyes all turned up towards the door. There was no sound nor movement from any of them. Grillo recognized many of their faces; they'd been waiting here when he and Eve had been ascending. Now the awaited moment had come. He began down the stairs towards them, the thought shaping in his head that the Jaff had sent him down to be torn apart by these worshippers. But he moved through their eye line, and out, without their gazes following him. It was the organ-grinder they were here to see, not the monkey.
From the room above emerged the sound of mass movement: the terata were coming. Reaching the bottom of the flight Grillo turned and looked back the way he'd come. The first of the creatures was emerging through the doorway. He'd seen that they were changed, but he'd not been prepared for the degree of change. Their busy foulness had been purged. They'd become plainer, most of their features veiled by the darkness they emitted.
Following the first few came the Jaff. Events since the final confrontation with Fletcher had taken their toll on him. He looked used up, almost skeletal. He started his descent, passing through pools of color from the lights outside the house, their vividness flooding his pallid features. Tonight the movie was The Masque of the Red Death, Grillo thought; and The Jaff was the name above the title.
The supporting cast of terata followed, pushing their bodies through the door and shambling down the stairs in pursuit of their maker.
Grillo glanced around at the silent assembly. They still had their fawning eyes upon the Jaff. He headed on, down the second flight. There was a second assembly waiting at the bottom, Rochelle among them. The sight of her extraordinary beauty momentarily reminded Grillo of his first encounter with her, descending the stairs just as the Jaff was now doing. Seeing her had been a revelation. She had seemed inviolate in that beauty. He'd learned differently. First from Ellen, with her account of Rochelle's past profession and present addiction, and now with the evidence of his own eyes, seeing the woman as lost to the depravities of the Jaff as any of his victims. Beauty was no defense. Most likely there was no defense. He reached the bottom of the stairs and waited for the Jaff to finish his descent, his legions trailing after. In the short time since his appearance at the top of the flight a change had come over him, subtle but unnerving. His face, which had betrayed tremors of apprehension, was now as blank as that of his congregation, his muscles so completely drained of tone his descent was a barely controlled walking fall. All the forces of his power had gone to his left hand, the hand which—back at the Mall—had bled the motes of power which had almost destroyed Fletcher. It was doing the same now, beads of bright corruption dripping from it like sweat as it hung by his side. They couldn't be the power itself, Grillo presumed, only its by-product, because the Jaff was making no attempt to prevent their breaking into small dark blooms on the stairs.
The hand was charging itself, draining power from every other part of its owner (perhaps, who knew? from the assembly itself); stoking its strength in preparation for the labors ahead. Grillo tried to study the Jaff's face for some sign of what he was feeling, but his eyes kept being drawn back and back to the hand, as though all lines of force led to it, all the other elements in the scene rendered irrelevant.
The Jaff moved through into the lounge. Grillo followed. The shadow legion remained on the stairs.
The lounge was still occupied, mostly by recumbent guests. Some were like disciples, their eyes fixed on the Jaff. Some were simply unconscious, sprawled on the furniture, undone by excess. On the floor lay Sam Sagansky, his shirt and face bloody. A little way from him, his hand still grasping Sagansky's jacket, lay another man. Grillo had no idea what had started the fracas between them but it had ended in a knockout.
"Turn on the lights," the Jaff told Grillo. His voice was as expressionless as his face had become. "Turn them full on. No mystery now. I want to see clearly."
Grillo located the switches in the gloom, and flipped them all on. Any theatricality in the scene was abruptly banished. The light brought growls of complaint from one or two of the slumberers, who threw their arms across their faces to shut it out. The man clasping Sagansky opened his eyes, and moaned, but didn't move, sensing his jeopardy. Grillo's gaze went back to the Jaff's hand. The beads of power had stopped dropping from it now. It had ripened. It was ready.
"No use delaying..." he heard the Jaff say, and saw him raise his left arm to eye level, his hand open. Then he walked to the far wall and laid his palm upon it.
Then, hand still pressed against solid reality, he began to make a fist.
Down at the gates Clark saw the lights go on in the house, and breathed a sigh of relief. That could only signal an end to the party. He put a general call out to the circling drivers (those that had not taken fright, and gone) instructing them to make their way back up the Hill. Their passengers would be emerging soon.