Darkfall

through the side window at the dark shape loping across the snow; it moved with feline grace. Farther back in the storm, beyond several veils of falling snow, there might have been other things coming this way; perhaps it was even the entire nightmare pack moving in for the kill, but it was hard to tell for sure. However, the first of the goblins, the catlike thing that had caught Leo’s eye, was undeniably out there, only thirty or forty feet away and closing fast.
    “Stop just a see,” Leo said. “Let me get out and scoop up the poor little fella.”
    “No!” Jack said. “Get the hell out of here. That’s no damned cat out there.”
    Startled, Burt looked over his shoulder at Jack.
    Penny began to shout the same thing again and again, and Davey took up her chant: “Don’t let them in, don’t let them in here, don’t let them in!”
    Face pressed to the window in his door, Leo said, “Jesus, you’re right. It isn’t any cat.”
    “ Move! ” Jack shouted.
    The thing leaped and struck the side window in front of Leo’s face. The glass cracked but held.
    Leo yelped, jumped, scooted backwards across the front seat, crowding Burt.
    Burt tramped down on the accelerator, and the tires spun for a moment.
    The hideous cat-thing clung to the cracked glass.
    Penny and Davey were screaming. Rebecca tried to shield them from the sight of the goblin.
    It probed at them with eyes of fire.
    Jack could almost feel the heat of that inhuman gaze. He wanted to empty his revolver at the thing, put half a dozen slugs into it, though he knew he couldn’t kill it.
    The tires stopped spinning, and the Jeep took off with a lurch and a shudder.
    Burt held the steering wheel with one hand and used the other hand to try to push Leo out of the way, but Leo wasn’t going to move even an inch closer to the fractured window where the cat-thing had attached itself.
    The goblin licked the glass with its black tongue.
    The Jeep careened toward the divider in the center of the avenue, and it started to slide.
    Jack said, “Damnit, don’t lose control!”
    “I can’t steer with him on my lap,” Burt said.
    He rammed an elbow into Leo’s side, hard enough to accomplish what all the pushing and shoving and shouting hadn’t managed to do; Leo moved-although not much.
    The cat-thing grinned at them. Double rows of sharp and pointed teeth gleamed.
    Burt stopped the sliding Jeep just before it would have hit the center divider. In control again, he accelerated.
    The engine roared.
    Snow flew up around them.
    Leo was making odd gibbeting sounds, and the kids were crying, and for some reason Burt began blowing the horn, as if he thought the sound would frighten the thing and make it let go.
    Jack’s eyes met Rebecca’s. He wondered if his own gaze was as bleak as hers.
    Finally, the goblin lost its grip, fell off, tumbled away into the snowy street.
    Leo said, “Thank God,” and collapsed back into his own corner of the front seat.
    Jack turned and looked out the rear window. Other dark beasts were coming out of the whiteness of the storm. They loped after the Jeep, but they couldn’t keep up with it. They quickly dwindled.
    Disappeared.
    But they were still out there. Somewhere.
    Everywhere.
    IX
    The shed.
    The hot, dry air.
    The stench of Hell.
    Again, the orange light abruptly grew brighter than it had been, not a lot brighter, just a little, and at the same time the air became slightly hotter, and the noises coming out of the pit grew somewhat louder and angrier, although they were still more of a whisper than a shout.
    Again, around the perimeter of the hole, the earth loosened of its own accord, dropped away from the rim, tumbled to the bottom and vanished in the pulsing orange glow. The diameter had increased by more than two inches before the earth became stable once more.
    And the pit was bigger.

PART THREE
    Wednesday , 11:20 P.M.- Thursday , 2:30 A.M.
    You know, Tolstoy, like myself, wasn’t taken in by superstitions-like science and medicine.
    -George Bernard Shaw
    There is superstition in avoiding superstition.
    -Francis Bacon

Chapter Seven

    I
    At headquarters, the underground garage was lighted but not very brightly lighted. Shadows crouched in corners; they spread like a dark fungus on the walls; they lay in wait between the rows of cars and other vehicles; they clung to the concrete ceilings and watched all that went on beneath them.
    Tonight, Jack was scared of the garage. Tonight, the omnipresent shadows