Then—he heard faint screams. Kids yelling for the hell of it? Or something else?
It seemed to him the humming from the fake house was getting louder…and louder still. The windows began to softly vibrate in their frames.
And a knock came at the door. Someone was yelling out there.
“Mr. McGrue!”
This was something he could deal with—a Halloween prank. He’d open the door, keeping the screen closed, and tell them the cops were coming, and then he’d point the unloaded shotgun to scare them away.
Energized by having something solid to confront, McGrue grabbed the 12-gauge from the closet, and went to the front door.
He hefted the shotgun in his most threatening manner, opened the door
—and saw Brian Worth, that kid with the skateboard he’d given a talking to, standing on the porch, panting, mouth and eyes wide open.
Beyond him were some kind of Halloween costumed kids or…
No.
Those weren’t costumes. That thing that was like a boneless human being moving across the grass like a snake, rippling its way to his house—that thing with the face of a boy he’d seen on the street, glowing a faint sickly green.
And the flying creature, the size of a large owl, an infant with large batwings of human flesh, its face contorted—another child’s face. It was flying in a zig-zag moth way toward his window.
And that one, a slug with a human face, glowing from within in purple-green coruscations. That was not a costumed child.
Tillinghast was at it again. He’d made an error. He’d let them through…
And there, the goat-headed lizard man McGrue had seen through the portal—head of a snake-skinned goat, body of a nude scaly man, hooves…loping toward McGrue’s house. And on its chest, fused there, was a mask from that movie Scream, and as Brian turned to look the mask’s mouth opened and showed big teeth and big gums and braces. The boy Lon—melded with the mask.
“Oh fucking shit shit shit, it’s got Lon inside it!—”
The snake-skinned goat-headed creature, the giant slug with a boy’s face, the snake-thing, coming across his lawn. And over them the flying child flashed by, shrieking, “Mamaaaaa!”, then circled to come around again. McGrue opened the screen door and shouted, “Brian get in here!”
McGrue ran to the armoire he kept his shotgun shells in, as Brian rushed in to the house, slammed and locked the front door. McGrue filled his jacket pocket with shotgun shells, cursing to himself and not even sure what profanities he was using.
With trembling fingers he loaded the gun as something shrieked in agony and hate just outside the front door. There was a crash from the living room window, and the flying infant flew in—it had a face of a child about seven but the body of an infant, the legs of a giant fly, and it swished back and forth shrieking for its mother.
Instinctively, McGrue aimed at the flying infant—and then Brian yelled, “No, it’s Rudy!” and knocked the gun muzzle up just as McGrue squeezed the trigger. One shell fired and knocked a hole in the ceiling, so that the room choked with a cloud of plaster. The flying infant flew shrieking out the window
—just as the door crashed inward, splintering, and then the snake boy was there, the size of an anaconda swaying in the doorway.
At the broken window the goat-headed lizard man with the cackling Scream-face in its chest was climbing through, snarling, the goat hissing, “HUM. HURT YOU. HUM. HURT YOU. HUM—”
McGrue pushed Brian aside and fired the second shell almost point blank into the Scream face.
Lon’s mask face vanished in a welter of blood and yellow effluvia, and the goat-thing staggered back. McGrue thumbed in another shell and fired again.
The thing threw its head back and howled, the howl combining with a roaringly loud background hum; a hum and a howl and a bellow of rage…
McGrue reloaded the gun and the thing turned and fled across the lawn.
Brian was throwing a brass vase at the snake. “Get out of here, Terry! He’ll kill you!”
The snake turned and rippled into the shadows out front.
Heart pounding, McGrue, ran through the door. Time seemed to move in staccato flashes. From somewhere, a siren screamed, seamless with the sound from the goat-headed thing rushing into the fake house. And McGrue heard, “HUM. HURT YOU. HUM. HURT YOU. YOU. YOU…”
McGrue ran across the lawn, through the gate, and it seemed to take forever for him to reach the house. His lungs and knees ached. He just knew he had to kill that thing, had to send it definitely away from this world forever…
The front door of the false house was open, waves of energy rolled through it, invisible but palpable, like a current trying to press McGrue back. But he pushed upstream, climbed the stairs, entered the house—and saw the goat-headed thing turn toward him, hissing, in front of the shimmering portal.
“You’re the one changed those kids!” McGrue shouted, even as the realization came to him. He fired one barrel from the hip and the thing was knocked off its hooved feet, backwards through the portal. The second shot he aimed at the projector.
It shattered, in a coruscation of sparks, and the portal vanished. Then the projector burst into flame—and the flame seemed to feed on the very air, spreading out, coming at McGrue in a wall of fire.
He turned, stumbled out the door, almost fell down the steps. Brian was there, now, steadying him, helping him down.
The light of the fire made the circular street area as bright as day, and McGrue felt the heat on the back of his neck.
Brian helped him back to the house…and he saw three kids curled up in the grass. They were moving, but shaking, weeping. But back to human again.
Brian went to kneel by the smallest one—Rudy, was it?—and McGrue found his way into the house, tossed his shotgun on the sofa, and sank down beside it, gasping.
Four days later. McGrue woke up groggy, the sleeping pill still with him. What was that sound?
Hammering, from the front of the house.
He pulled on his pants, and came out into the living room, to find plywood over the front window, someone nailing it in place from the outside.
McGrue went to the front porch and found Brian, nails in his mouth, a stepladder set up, nailing up the last corner of the plywood.
“Kid, what the hell?”
Brian climbed off the stepladder and took the nails from his mouth. He shrugged ruefully. “I…um…you had flies and stuff getting into your house. Mary Sue said it’d be okay. She loaned me the ladder.”
“Oh, she did, did she.” He went to look. Was surprised. “You did a good job. Not a crooked nail. The whole thing’s squared. Nailed minimally because…temporary. Where’d you learn that?”
“My dad was a construction guy. He taught me some. I always thought I might want…”
“What?”
“To be a carpenter. Or something. Maybe make cabinets.”
“No kidding?” McGrue rubbed his forehead. “Damn I need coffee. Well—thanks, Brian. I should’ve done that myself. And you did a good job, I gotta admit.”
“That’s okay, Mr. McGrue.” The kid beamed at the compliment.
Mary Sue came to the gate, and, despite his pajama top, pants with no shoes, and rumpled hair, McGrue walked out through the crisp November morning to join her. They looked at the burned-out shell of the cell-phone transmitter house.
“The police been back?” she asked.
“Naw, they went with the kids smoking pot and seeing things and an electrical fire. That’s the official line. And that Lon kid vandalizing my house.”
“He still hasn’t turned up.”
McGrue thought, And he never will. But he didn’t say it. He and Brian had decided, that night, they shouldn’t tell anyone what had happened. Neither wanted to be ridiculed. And neither wanted to think about that night any more than they had to. The three other boys didn’t remember much of anything.