"Toby? Toby, look at me."
He obeyed. He was no longer swaying, his eyes were clear, and he seemed to be back in touch with reality.
Falstaff barked, and Heather thought he was agitated by all the noise, perhaps by the stark fear he sensed in her, but then she saw that his attention was on the window above the sink. He rapped out hard, vicious, warning barks meant to scare off an adversary.
She spun around in time to see something on the porch slip away to the left of the window. It was dark and tall. She glimpsed it out of the corner of her eye, but it was too quick for her to see what it was.
The doorknob rattled.
The radio had been a diversion.
As Heather snatched the Micro Uzi off the counter, the retriever charged past her and positioned himself in front of the pots and pans and dishes stacked against the back door. He barked ferociously at the brass knob, which turned back and forth, back and forth… Heather grabbed Toby by the shoulder, pushed him toward the hall door.
"Into the hall, but stay close behind me quick!"
The matches were already in her jacket pocket. She snared the nearest of the five-gallon cans of gasoline by its handle. She could take only one because she wasn't about to put down the Uzi.
Falstaff was like a mad dog, snarling so savagely that spittle flew from his chops, hair standing up straight on the back of his neck, his tail flat across his butt, crouched and tense, as if he might spring at the door even before the thing outside could come through it.
The lock opened with a hard clack.
The intruder had a key. Or maybe it didn't need one. Heather remembered how the radio had snapped on by itself.
She backed onto the threshold between the kitchen and ground-floor hall.
Reflections of the overhead light trickled scintillantly along the brass doorknob as it turned.
She put the can of gasoline on the floor and held the Uzi with both hands.
"Falstaff, get away from there! Falstaff!"
As the door eased inward, the tower of housewares tottered.
The dog backed off as she continued to call to him.
The security assemblage teetered, tipped over, crashed. Pots, pans, and dishes bounced-slid-spun across the kitchen floor, forks and knives rang against one another like bells, and drinking glasses shattered.
The dog scrambled to Heather's side but kept barking fiercely, teeth bared, eyes wild.
She had a sure grip on the Uzi, the safeties off, her finger curled lightly on the trigger. What if it jammed? Forget that, it wouldn't jam. It had worked like a dream when she'd tried it out against a canyon wall in a remote area above Malibu several months earlier: automatic gunfire echoing along the walls of that narrow defile, spent shell casings spewing into the air, scrub brush torn to pieces, the smell of hot brass and burned gunpowder, bullets banging out in a punishing stream, as smooth and easy as water from a hose. It wouldn't jam, not in a million years. But, Jesus, what if it does?
The door eased inward. A narrow crack. An inch. Then wider.
Something snaked through the gap a few inches above the knob. In that instant the nightmare was confirmed, the unreal made real, the impossible suddenly incarnate, for what intruded was a tentacle, mostly.black but irregularly speckled with red, as shiny and smooth as wet silk, perhaps two inches in diameter at the thickest point that she could see, tapering as thin as an earthworm at the tip. It quested into the warm air of the kitchen, fluidly curling, flexing obscenely.
That was enough. She didn't need to see more, didn't want to see more, so she opened fire. Chuda-chudachuda-chuda. The briefest squeeze of the trigger spewed six or seven rounds, punching holes in the oak door, gouging and splintering the edge of it. The deafening explosions slammed back and forth from wall to wall of the kitchen, sharp echoes overlaying echoes.
The tentacle slipped away with the alacrity of a retracted whip.
She heard no cry, no unearthly scream. She didn't know if she had hurt the thing or not.
She wasn't going to go and look on the porch, no way, and she wasn't going to wait to see if it would storm into the room more aggressively the next time.
Because she didn't know how fast the creature might be able to move, she needed to put more distance between herself and the back door.
She grabbed the can of gasoline at her side, Uzi in one hand, and backed out of the doorway, into the hall, almost tripping over the dog as he scrambled to retreat with her. She backed to the foot of the stairs, where Toby waited for her.
"Mom?" he said, voice tight with fear.
Peering along the hall and across the kitchen, she could see the back door because it was in a direct line with her. It remained ajar, but nothing was forcing entry yet. She knew the intruder must still be on the porch, gripping the outside knob, because otherwise the wind would have pushed the door all the way open.
Why was it waiting? Afraid of her? No. Toby had said it was never afraid.
Another thought rocked her: If it didn't understand the concept of death, that must mean it couldn't die, couldn't be killed. In which case guns were useless against it.
Still, it waited, hesitated. Maybe what Toby had learned about it was all a lie, and maybe it was as vulnerable as they were or more so, even fragile.
Wishful thinking. It was all she had.
She was not quite to the midpoint of the hall. Two more steps would put her there, between the archways to the dining and living rooms.
But she was far enough from the back door to have a chance of obliterating the creature if it erupted into the house with unnatural speed and power. She stopped, put the gasoline can on the floor beside the newel post, and clutched the Uzi in both hands again… "Mom?"
"Sssshhhh."
"What're we gonna do?" he pleaded.
"Sssshhhh. Let me think."
Aspects of the intruder were obviously snakelike, although she couldn't know if that was the nature of only its appendages or of its entire body. Most snakes could move fast-or coil and spring substantial distances with deadly accuracy.
The back door remained ajar. Unmoving. Wisps of snow followed drafts through the narrow gap between the door and the jamb, into the house, spinning and glittering across the tile floor.
Whether or not the thing on the back porch was fast, it was undeniably big.
She'd sensed its considerable size when she'd had only the most fleeting glimpse of it slipping away from the window. Bigger than she was.
"Come on," she muttered, her attention riveted on the back door. "Come on, if you're never afraid, come on."
Both she and Toby cried out in surprise when, in the living room, the television switched on, with the volume turned all the way up.
Frenetic, bouncy music. Cartoon music. A screech of brakes, a crash and clatter, with comic accompaniment on a flute. Then the voice of a frustrated Elmer Fudd booming through the house:
"OOOHHH, I HATE THAT WABBIT!"
Heather kept her attention on the back door, beyond the hall and kitchen, altogether about fifty feet away.
So loud each word vibrated the windows, Bugs Bunny said: "EH, WHAT'S UP, DOC" And then a sound of something bouncing:
BOING, BOINC, BOING, BOING, BOING. "STOP THAT, STOP THAT, YOU CWAZY WABBIT!"
Falstaff ran into the living room, barking at the TV, and then scurried into the hall again, looking past Heather to where he, too, knew the real enemy still waited.
The back door.
Snow sifting through the narrow opening.
In the living room, the television program fell silent in the middle of a long comical trombone crescendo that, even under the circumstances, brought to mind a vivid image of Elmer Fudd sliding haplessly and inexorably toward one doom or another. Quiet. Just the keening wind.outside.
One second. Two. Three.