Darkfall

something. A strange, shrill cry. It wasn’t human. Faint. Far away. Maybe in another apartment, several floors farther down in the building. The cry seemed to have come to her through the heating ducts.
    She waited tensely. A minute. Two minutes. Three.
    The cry wasn’t repeated. There were no other unnatural sounds, either.
    But she knew what she had heard and what it meant. They were coming for her and Davey. They were on their way now. Soon, they would be here.
    XV
    This time, their love-making was slow, lazy, achingly tender, filled with much nuzzling and wordless murmuring and soft-soft stroking. A series of dreamy sensations: a feeling of floating, a feeling of being composed only of sunlight and other energy, an exhilaratingly weightless tumbling, tumbling. This time, it was not so much an act of sex as it was an act of emotional bonding, a spiritual pledge made with the flesh. And when, at last, Jack spurted deep within her velvet recesses, he felt as if he were fusing with her, melting into her, becoming one with her., and he sensed that she felt the same thing.
    “That was wonderful.”
    “Perfect.”
    “Better than a peanut butter and onion sandwich?”
    “Almost.”
    “You bastard.”
    “Hey, peanut butter and onion sandwiches are pretty darned terrific, you know!”
    “I love you,” he said.
    “I’m glad,” she said.
    That was an improvement.
    She still couldn’t bring herself to say she loved him, too. But he wasn’t particularly bothered by that. He knew she did.
    He was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressing.
    She was standing on the other side of the bed, slipping into her blue robe.
    Both of them were startled by a sudden violent movement. A framed poster from a Jasper Johns art exhibition tore loose of its mountings and flew off the wall. It was a large poster, three-and-a-half-feet- by-two-and-a-half-feet, framed behind glass. It seemed to hang in the air for a moment, vibrating, and then it struck the floor at the foot of the bed with a tremendous crash.
    “What the hell!” Jack said.
    “What could’ve done that?” Rebecca said.
    The sliding closet door flew open with a bang, slammed shut, flew open again.
    The six-drawer highboy tipped away from the wall, toppled toward Jack, and he jumped out of the way, and the big piece of furniture hit the floor with the sound of a bomb explosion.
    Rebecca backed against the wall and stood there, rigid and wide- eyed, her hands fisted at her sides.
    The air was cold. Wind whirled through the room. Not just a draft, but a wind almost as powerful as the one that whipped through the city streets, outside. Yet there was nowhere that a cold wind could have gained admission; the door and the window were closed tight.
    And now, at the window, it seemed as if invisible hands grabbed the drapes and tore them loose of the rod from which they were hung. The drapes dropped in a heap, and then the rod itself was torn out of the wall and thrown aside.
    Drawers slid all the way out of the nightstands and fell onto the floor, spilling their contents.
    Several strips of wallpaper began to peel off the walls, starting at the top and going down.
    Jack turned this way and that, frightened, confused, not sure what he should do.
    The dresser mirror cracked in a spiderweb pattern.
    The unseen presence stripped the blanket from the bed and pitched it onto the toppled highboy.
    “Stop it!” Rebecca shouted at the empty air. “Stop it!”
    The unseen intruder did not obey.
    The top sheet was pulled from the bed. It whirled into the air, as if it had been granted life and the ability to fly; it floated off into a corner of the room, where it collapsed, lifeless again.
    The fitted bottom sheet popped loose at two corners.
    Jack grabbed it.
    The other two corners came loose, as well.
    Jack tried to hold on to the sheet. It was a feeble and pointless effort to resist whatever power was wrecking the room, but it was the only thing he could think to do, and he simply had to do something. The sheet was quickly wrenched out of his hands with such force that he was thrown off balance. He stumbled and fell to his knees.
    On a wheeled TV stand in the corner, the portable television set snapped on of its own accord, the volume booming. A fat woman was dancing the cha-cha with a cat, and a thunderous chorus was singing the praises of Purina Cat Chow.
    Jack scrambled to his feet.
    The mattress cover was skinned off the bed, lifted into the air, rolled into a ball, and