v.
The thing beat against the glass, desperate to get inside. Drawn to the creature, Jack Peter stepped forward, and Nick had to catch him by the shoulder to restrain his impulse. Like a caged animal, the white man watched with rapt attention, studying the boys’ every movement, and as they started to back away, he bared his teeth in an expression of rage.
Nick pulled hard and spun his friend around. “No, we have to get out of here, understand? You can’t let it in.” Jack Peter’s eyes were dull and vacant. Grabbing him by the hand, Nick dragged him into the kitchen. The monster slid its fingers from the windowpanes and then vanished.
“What is that thing?”
Unresponsive, Jack Peter was already lost in the wilderness of his imagination, staring over Nick’s shoulder toward the mudroom. Refusing to let go, Nick forced him to the telephone hanging on the wall. “We have to call. Get the police. Find someone to help.”
The outside door to the mudroom broke under the weight of a shoulder, the wood splintering with a loud crack, and the body stumbled through the opening. Tossing aside the coats and boots and skis and empty crates, it made its way toward the kitchen, as Nick hurried to throw the bolt to the inner door before it arrived. Looking for escape and a safe haven, he crossed to the door to the workroom stairs and flicked on the overhead light. There were a dozen nooks and crannies in which to hide, though he did not know how long they could hold out there. Leaving Jack Peter behind, he took the first few steps down the wooden staircase to investigate.
Something scurried below. Nick could sense the movement before he could see it. The floor was covered with them. Those same phantom babies from the other night, mewling and fussing as the sudden light disturbed their shadowy hiding places. Nick screamed and then held his breath, terrified but unable to look away. They swarmed like insects on the floor, tottered on the workbench, sidled by the table saw. Under the glare of the artificial light, they were more defined than they had been on that horrible night when they climbed the walls. Babies with odd bodies, exaggerated eyes misshapen as fried eggs, sketched-in noses, and mouths wide and red as gilled fishes. They were not babies at all but the embodiment of the fevers hatched in the mind of their creator. Drawing made flesh and bone, distortions of reality. Some had jagged marks along their bodies or across their heads, scars that looked taped together. Little demons, fat and squalid and raw. They moved as if lost and blind, hissing like cockroaches, until two and then three took notice of him on the stairs and began to race toward him with unnatural speed. As if waking from a dream, he switched off the light and retreated, banging the door behind him and pushing in the flimsy lock. They cried as though wounded by his disappearance.
The kitchen was empty. Jack Peter was not where he had left him, nowhere to be seen. The inner door from the mudroom was ajar. Cold air slithered in and wet prints of large bare feet dirtied the floor, trailing off to the stairway to the upper level. The smell of fish hung in the air, a pungent odor on the edge of rotten. Making himself small, Nick crouched beneath the table and wrapped his arms around his knees to stop himself from shaking. The table leg vibrated against his body, and he tried to hold his breath and be completely silent, but he could not stop his nervous panting. He could not decide whether to risk running to the phone or to hunt for Jack Peter. Each passing moment heightened his fear. Do something, anything. Willing the Keenans to burst through the open door, he listened but heard no passing car on the road, no turn of the key. The fire crackled in the next room, the fridge hummed mechanically, and the wind whistled through the ruined doorway. Nothing else moved. The creatures in the workroom must be napping in the darkness, and elsewhere in the house not a sound came from Jack Peter or the white man. That silence disturbed every hope for peace, and for the first time, Nick wondered if the monster had stolen the boy and run away and left him all alone in the house.