Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror (30 page)

The Watcher
was
a wild card.

It was a lady-or-the-tiger situation.

Finally, he realized he had no choice but to trust, and he reached out and rapidly wiped several of the symbols off the silver tray with his sleeve.

The Master started forward. “No!”

But it was too late.

The odd stillness that had overtaken the house vanished. And within seconds the Watcher appeared at the end of the corridor. It quickly assessed the situation, looking first at the open doorway and then at each person in turn. Then, after apparently discerning that the Master was the main person responsible for what was happening, it drifted over to him and stopped only a few feet in front of him.

The Master stood his ground and stared back at the Watcher probingly. His emerald eyes narrowed.

“So now comes the moment of reckoning,” he murmured calmly. “Which is it? Are you on their side? Or are you on ours?”

The Watcher gazed at him for a moment longer, and then suddenly it reached up into the air, and in a flash of light so brilliant it nearly blinded them, it plucked a massive sword out of the nothingness. From the dazzling way the sword sparkled it appeared to be constructed out of pure energy, and the sight of it caused the Master to step back cautiously.

“So now we know. You are on the side of light, aren’t you? Well, I warn you, you have never contended with the likes of me before.” After he finished the words, the Master held his arms out and prepared to do battle.

Lauren grabbed Garrett by the arm and tried to head for the door, but Fugate stopped them. “Wh-what should I do?” he stammered, frightened, and looking to the Master for direction.

“Keep them there!” the Master said, sizing the situation up out of the corner of his eye. “We may still need them—”

But the words had scarcely left his Ups when suddenly the Watcher lunged for him. It crashed the glistening sword down, intending to cleave him in the shoulder, but the Master dove out of the way. The Watcher rushed forward, swinging the sword at him again, but again with supernatural swiftness the Master avoided the coruscating blade. Then he leaped to his feet and, gesturing magically with his hand in the air, hurtled a sizzling blue fireball straight at the Watcher.

The Watcher sidestepped it deftly, but was visibly startled, and the fireball crashed into the wall behind it and exploded in a shower of sparks.

“Didn’t think I could do that, did you?” the Master gloated. He quickly shot another fireball at the Watcher, and then another, and although the Watcher dealt with each of them capably, they provided the Master with enough time to try another incantation. “
In hep nehebka, neb mahotep mene ra!
” he shouted into the darkness of the doorway. “
In hep nehebka, neb mahotep mene ra!
” He waited, glancing into the darkness anxiously.

But still nothing happened.

After the last fireball fizzled out, the Watcher lunged again, and again the Master was forced to retreat. “So what is it?” he roared, angry but still haughty. “I know there’s got to be an incantation that will release them, and if this house really is a kind of sword in the stone, that means the spell is probably right in front of us somewhere, doesn’t it?” He scanned the walls of the corridor as he continued to creep backward.

The Watcher charged forward, cornering him. Screaming, the Master tried to get away, but this time it was too late, and to keep the sword from crashing down on top of him he was forced to grab the Watcher’s wrist. As he did so, a hiss of lightning spread out from where their flesh made contact, and continued to flash and crackle as the two began to wrestle.

Lauren and Garrett watched breathlessly. Despite the Watcher’s vaporous appearance, the Master was able to grip it as if it were solid. But every time their flesh made contact, the room lighted up from the pyrotechnic mixing of their energies. They fought viciously, savagely, the enormous strength of each at first appearing to be a perfect match for the other. But then finally the Watcher began to gain an edge.

Grabbing the Master firmly by the shoulders, it sent him crashing into the wall, and then lunged at him again. But this time when the Master went to roll out of the way, it anticipated his move and met him with the sword, slicing his hand off neatly at the wrist.

The Master screamed with agony as a stream of greenish bilelike liquid began to spurt out of his severed wrist. “Damn you!” he cursed as he wrapped his other hand tightly around the stump to try to stanch the bleeding. Then, with eyes glowing volcanically, he opened his mouth and screamed again. But this time, in addition to a ghastly and earsplitting wail, out of his mouth issued a torrent of strange and disgusting substances: great volumes of something that looked like sheets of black spiderweb, rubbery clots of black congealed blood, small black feathery things, and gallons of sticky black liquid that solidified into a network of tendrils and fibers as soon as they hit the Watcher.

For several seconds the Watcher was immobilized as it cut through the sticky mess with the sword. And although it was obvious it would be free in moments, suddenly an excited gleam came into the Master’s eyes.

“But of course! That’s got to be it!” he said, turning toward the doorway. “It
has
been right under our noses all along!” Keeping one eye trained on the Watcher, he quickly began to recite the words: “
Ingirum imus nocte
...”

The Watcher cut through the last tendril of the discharge.

“...
et consumimur igni.
”

The Watcher stepped out of the shroud and started for the Master.

But it was too late.

The house shuddered as a long and baleful howl came from the darkness.

And just as the Watcher was about to reach the Master, through the doorway burst such a gale of wind that even the Watcher was no match for its force. Struggling to keep its grip on the sword, it held its arms close to its body as the hurricane wind sent it crashing into the opposite side of the corridor.

Lauren screamed, bracing herself against one of the baulks lining the walls and clutching Garrett closer to her side. And even Fugate cowered in terror.

But the Master only laughed. “Yes! Yes!” he shrilled, somehow keeping his balance as he held his arms out welcomingly to the wind.

For several seconds it continued, keeping everyone but the Master pinned against the wall. Then, in one single, explosive flash, it started.

The first things to hit were the locustlike demons, their metallic armor still wet with condensation. They swarmed through the doorway in droves, diving and darting like angry bees. At first they appeared mindless in their frenzy. But then one stopped and hovered just inches from Lauren’s face, and as she stared into its large and eerily sentient eyes, she realized it was not mindless, but dangerously intelligent. It hissed at her, baring its ferocious teeth, and she screamed and knocked it away with her fist.

It was just about to attack her again when the Master intervened. “Not her! The Watcher! Get the Watcher!”

Hissing at her one last time, the locust headed for the Watcher, and the other locusts in the room quickly did the same. They descended in a gnashing, glistening cloud, nipping and biting the Watcher viciously.

The locusts had not even finished raining down when still other creatures started to pour through the doorway —the insectlike demons that resembled houseflies and wasps, and the ghostly sylphlike beings with the dark, sunken eyes. They whirled around the room like an unearthly snowstorm, keening and shrilling, and flexing their long-frozen appendages. And then, as soon as they had assessed the situation, they descended on the Watcher in droves.

With the Watcher preoccupied, the Master was free to continue his own attack, and he opened his mouth and vomited up another wave of the black, weblike substance. It wrapped around the Watcher like a sticky shroud, encumbering it further, as the sylphs and the demons continued their attack.

At first the Watcher fought heroically, killing vast numbers of the creatures with each swing of its sword. But finally the onslaught became too much and the Watcher fell to its knees, and dropped the sword of light on the floor.

Shrieking with glee, the Master rushed forward and reached for the sword, intending to finish the Watcher off. But it was a fatal error, for as soon as he touched the magical weapon, it exploded, and blew off his remaining hand.

However, instead of dispersing, the fragments of the sword swirled through the room like a glittering maelstrom, and then quickly reconstituted themselves in the Watcher’s hand.

With the balance of power thus offset, the Watcher struggled back to its feet, and once again started hacking away at the swarm. As it did so, it also began to speak:

“
Trinitas, Sother, Adonay, Eloim
.”

“No!” the Master screamed.

“
Sabahot, Messias, Jehovam, Infinitas
.”

Abruptly, the wind that was surging through the doorway faltered and shifted direction as the keening of the swarm became tinged with fear.

“No!” the Master repeated, as he swelled his chest and readied himself to launch another attack. But this time Watcher was ready. “
Zazay
!” it roared, sending a crackling ball of blue lightning hurtling from its outstretched fingers and into the Master’s chest. “
Salmay, Angerecton!
” it shouted, unleashing another barrage, and causing the Master to fall and start sliding toward the doorway.

“No!” the Master repeated, the stumps of his arms scraping uselessly on the floor.

But like a tide being pulled back by the moon, the wind just continued its reversal, roaring and sucking the swarm back into the darkness.

Finally, only the Master and Fugate remained—the Master clinging piteously with his stumps to the side of the door, and Fugate still cowering against the wall.

The Watcher prodded Fugate in the back with the sword and sent him scurrying to the Master’s side.

Fugate started to cry. “You’re not going to send
me
in there, are you?” he blubbered, looking down into the darkness.

The Master was infinitely less contrite. “Goddam you, you son of a bitch! You may have won this time, but I’ll be back! I’ll—”

But the Watcher just ignored him and swiftly kicked him down the stairs.

Seeing the Master vanish into the darkness, Fugate’s eyes widened even further, and his crying became convulsive. “No, please, I’ll be good! I’ll do whatever you say! I’ll—”

But the Watcher just pushed him into the darkness and calmly shut and bolted the door.

It wearily turned around and leveled its gaze at Lauren and Garrett. With the door already shut, Lauren thought it unlikely that it was reserving the same fate for them, but after everything she had just witnessed, she still had no idea what it was going to do next. She waited breathlessly, terrified, as it stared at them for a moment longer.

Finally it spoke. “You must leave now,” it murmured simply. Then it turned and once again started down the corridor.

“Wait!” Garrett called. But even as he shouted the word he knew it would not stop. That was not its purpose. It had fulfilled its purpose, and now its only job was to continue its wanderings, its penance.

It quickly vanished back into the cavernous house, and after it did, they gathered themselves together and started their own trek back through the maze of halls. As they did, they remained silent, each beginning to piece together at least part of the answers to all of the questions that had plagued them.

From the way the Watcher behaved, Garrett now knew it was the forces of light that had inspired Sarah Balfram to build the house. He knew that the same power of good was also responsible for setting the Watcher up as the guardian of the doorway.

For her part, Lauren now understood why so many of the murderers who had committed crimes in the house had subsequently vanished without a trace, and why the threshold of the great doorway was so scuffed and bore the traces of so many fruitless struggles. She was also beginning to realize that the purpose of the house had never been to unleash evil, but to trap it: to draw it in, and entice and beguile it. The house was indeed a store-place, but not one that was merely holding its inhabitants for some future and apocalyptic offensive. It was a store-place that kept its quarry forever.

Most important of all, Garrett realized that it was wise that he had not stopped trusting everything. Had he stopped, their doom would have been sealed. However, he also realized that in this situation at least, it had been mere serendipity, the luck of the draw, that had allowed him to make the right choice.

There were things that were evil in the universe, unfathomably evil.

And there were things that were good.

And there were things like the Watcher that were of such complexity, and possessed such subtlety of shading, that they were not really categorizable as either. Things that transcended such simplistic moral pigeonholes.

But for Garrett, all that mattered as they descended the main staircase was that the nightmare was over. Both he and his mother had survived.

When they reached the front entrance hall, Lauren packed them each a small bag, and then with flashlights in hand they left the house and started toward Clearwater Lodge. Although the prospect of making such a trek at night still filled her with trepidation, somehow the cosmic implications of the house—the notion that there were forces at work on the earth whose only purpose was to combat evil—gave her courage to brave the journey.

And she did not want to spend the rest of the night in the house.

Halfway to the lodge, a car passed them. But they hid in the bushes as it approached, and seeing only one person in the car, a man, they decided not to reveal themselves or try to wave it down. They did not know who the man was, and Lauren simply did not want to risk it.

However, several hours later, as dawn was beginning to tinge the sky, they saw a camper driven by an elderly couple. They waved it down, and the couple gave them a ride the rest of the way to the lodge.