Her mother's lifeless arm came up; her finger pointed accusingly at her. "Your fault!" The words croaked from her mother's constricted throat, dribbled from lips grayed with death.
Kim's heart thudded, her legs went weak. Hysteria threatened to overwhelm her. But then, from somewhere deep within, she heard her aunt's voice whispering. "It will protect you. The cross will protect you." Forcing back the hysteria that threatened to paralyze her, Kim turned away from the specter hanging from the chandelier, and went to the small dresser on which her mother's jewelry box sat. Opening the lid, she began searching, hunting for the second cross. The top tray was filled with a tangle of necklaces and a few inexpensive rings, but there was no sign of the cross. Kim lifted out the tray. Beneath it was another compartment, in which lay three boxes. The first one contained a single strand of pearls; the second an ornately carved jade pendant Kim hadn't seen since her grandmother had died a dozen years earlier. Attached to the pendant's chain was a small tag, with a message written in her grandmother's shaky hand:
For Kim on her 21st birthday. She clutched the pendant for a moment, then put it back and opened the third box.
The second gold cross glittered brightly. As Kim lifted it out of the box, a scream of agony erupted behind her. She whirled around to see her mother's corpse twitching at the end of the rope; both hands were now stretched toward Kim as greedy fingers tried to snatch away the cross.
"No!" Kim breathed. "Never!"
The specter screamed again, the dead features of the face contorting with rage. The arms stretched toward her until the fingers almost touched Kim's flesh.
Her courage teetered as her heart pounded. But she didn't flinch away.
With one final howl of enraged frustration, the terrible specter of her mother's corpse dropped away.
The chain wrapped around Kim's fingers, the cross itself clutched tightly in her left hand, she returned to the bedroom door and paused, listening. Through the door's thick panels she could hear something-something that sounded faintly familiar, but that she couldn't quite put a name to.
She opened the door a crack, and instantly the sound threatened to deafen her.
Wasps!
Millions of them, swirling in a cloud so thick she almost couldn't see across to the opposite side of the hall. All her instincts told her to slam the door closed again, to cower in the safety of the bedroom until the stinging horde was gone. But once again she forced her instincts aside and threw the door wide.
The wasps swirled around her head.
Steadily, Kim began walking toward the head of the stairs, her skin crawling with the anticipation of millions of tiny feet clinging to her, thousands of stingers plunging into her body. She broke into a run, pounded down the stairs, then through the doors into the dining room. She slammed the dining room doors closed. Instantly, the droning of the insects died away.
As she moved toward the door to the basement stairs, she tried not to even glance at her mother's mural, terrified of what she might now see there. But her eyes were drawn to it, and her breath caught in her throat as she gazed into a blazing inferno beyond the French doors she had watched her mother draw. Flames were everywhere; the trees bore limbs of fire, and clouds of smoke hung in the sky. Burning figures whirled and spun across the fiery lawn. The cacophonic moans of a thousand tortured souls rolled out of the scene, and Kim felt an unbearable hopelessness pervade her.
Then a longing seized her-a terrible longing to banish the cold that had enveloped her the moment she'd entered the house by stepping into the blaze. Abruptly, the French doors were no longer painted on the wall, and she knew all she had to do was step through them and she would be warmed by the fires.
The fires of Hell.
She took a step toward the doors; they opened of their own volition, as if to welcome her.
Another step.
Then another.
Only one more, and-
Seizing control of herself, Kim turned away from the flaming eternity beyond the doors and moved instead to the door that led to the basement.
A door that slammed behind her, plunging her into inky blackness.
The cross clutched in her hand, she began descending the stairs.
Janet felt the tip of the dagger at her throat, but even the threat of its plunging deep into her neck would not have stopped her had she been able to force her body to obey her will. But instead of responding to the commands of her mind, everything below her neck had gone numb. It was as if some alien force had wrested control from her, compelling her to stand where she was and watch.
Ted had by now opened the skin of the dog, unwrapping Molly, who now lay naked upon the altar.
Molly, too, seemed in the grip of the same force that had paralyzed Janet, for she made no move to escape. But she was crying, and Janet could hear her terror.
Ted had lain the child on her back, and she looked utterly helpless in the candlelight. Her eyes were fastened on the image on the cross-Janet's own image-and Janet was certain Molly thought that what she was seeing was real.
"Stop," she begged Ted. "For the love of God, Ted! What are you doing?"
Ted turned to face her. Though she still recognized him, his handsome features were bloated, his skin blotched and mottled. Sores and pustules were erupting on every part of him that she could see, and as he turned to her, his robe fell open.
His skin was rippling strangely, and then Janet saw the source of the rippling as swarms of maggots began to break through his skin, wriggling free, dropping off him to creep across the floor toward her.
She sobbed, and with every cry that emerged from her throat, a hideous peal of cruel laughter boiled from her husband's mouth.
His glittering eyes flicked toward her as the knife in Jared's hand moved. Janet felt the point slip through her skin.
"Wait!" Ted commanded.
Jared froze. The knife stayed, quivering, its point still in her flesh.
"Molly," Ted whispered. "Molly first, and then your mother."
"No," Janet whispered. It was a nightmare-it had to be! And yet, despite its impossibility, Janet knew it wasn't a dream. "Oh, please…" she moaned, her voice breaking.
The point of the knife withdrew as Jared moved away from her, leaving a bead of blood on her neck. But still Janet was held in the thrall of the unseen force, and could do nothing to save her youngest child. As she watched helplessly, Jared approached the altar until he stood above Molly, the dagger poised above her naked belly.
"Do it, Jared," Ted's menacing voice whispered. "You know you have to, Jared. You know you want to! Serve your master, Jared! Serve him as I promised you would!"
An explosion of pure rage erupted from Janet. "What!" she demanded. What master? What did you promise? "Tell me what you did!"
Ted's glittering eyes fixed on her. "I did what I had to do," he spat. "I did what I needed to do for me, and for you, too!"
Janet gazed bleakly at him, her mind reeling, trying to grasp what he was saying. But nothing made any sense. Everything she was seeing, everything she was hearing-all of it was impossible. Yet deep inside, she knew it wasn't impossible. Deep inside-in some way she would never be able to fathom-she knew what Ted had done.
He had given up his soul.
And his son's soul, too.
Not his son! Their son! "No," she screamed. "You can't do it. You can't give Jared away! He's not yours, Ted!"
"Isn't he?" Ted taunted. "Watch him! Just watch him. He'll do exactly as he's told." He turned away from Janet to face the altar, and raised his arms.
Before her the inverted cross-and the agonized image of Janet herself-disappeared. In its place a visage of pure evil materialized, a face with features torn from a nightmare. The eyes, sunk deep within suppurating sockets, glittered in the hard, cold light. They were fixed on Janet, and she could feel them boring into her, searching deep within her, looking for-what?