Mr. Murder

Man, defined by footprints and fury.
        He frenziedly seeks an entrance, hastily inspecting each window as he passes it.
        Virtually all of the glass is gone from the tall stained-glass panels, but the steel mullions remain. Much of the lead came that defined the original patterns remains between the mullions, though in many places it is bent and twisted and drooping, tortured by weather or by the hands of vandals, rendering the outlines of the original religious symbols and figures unrecognizable, and in their place leaving teratogenic forms as meaningless as the shapes in melted candles.
        The next to the last nave window is missing its steel frame, mullions, and came. The granite stool marking the base of the window is five feet off the ground. He boosts himself up with the nimbleness of a gymnast and squats on his haunches on the deep sill. He peers into numberless shadows interleaved with strange sinuous streams of radiant orange, yellow, green, and blue.
        A child screams.
        Racing down the center aisle of the graffiti-smeared church, Paige had the peculiar feeling that she was underwater in tropical climes, beneath a Caribbean cove, in caverns of gaudily luminescent coral, equatorial seaweed waving its feathery and radiant fronds on all sides o ner.
        Charlotte screamed.
        Having reached the chancel rail, Paige spun to face the nave.
        Swinging the Mossberg left and right, searching in panic for the threat, she saw The Other as Emily shouted, "In the window, get him!"
        He was, indeed, squatting in one of the south-wall windows, a dark shape that seemed only half human against the fading light and the whitening showers of snow. Shoulders hunched, head low, arms dangling, he had an apelike aspect.
        Her reflexes were quick. She fired the Mossberg without hesitation.
        Even if the distance hadn't been in his favor, however, he would have escaped untouched because he was moving even as she pulled the trigger.
        With the fluid grace of a wolf, he seemed to pour off the sill and onto the floor. The buckshot passed harmlessly through the space that he had occupied and clattered off the window jambs that had framed him.
        Evidently on all fours, he vanished among the rows of pews, where the deepest shadows in the church were humbled. If she went hunting for him there, he would drag her down and kill her.
        She backed through the chancel rail and across the sanctuary to Marty and the girls, keeping the shotgun ready.
        The four of them retreated into an adjoining room that might have been the sacristy. A pair of casement windows admitted barely enough light to reveal three doors in addition to the one through which they'd entered.
        Paige closed the door to the sanctuary and attempted to lock it.
        But it wasn't equipped with a lock. No furniture was available to brace or blockade it, either.
        Marty tried one of the other doors. "Closet."
        Shrill wind and snow erupted through the door that Charlotte opened, so she slammed it shut.
        Checking the third possibility, Emily said, "Stairs."
        Among the pews. Creeping. Cautious.
        He hears a door slam shut.
        He waits.
        Listens.
        Hunger. Hot pain fades quickly to a low heat. Bleeding slows to a trickle, an ooze. Now hunger overwhelms him as his body demands enormous amounts of fuel to facilitate the reconstruction of damaged tissues.
        Already he's metabolizing body fat and protein to make urgent repairs to torn and severed blood vessels. His metabolism accelerates unmercifully, an entirely autonomic function over which he has no power.
        This gift that makes him so much less vulnerable than other men will soon begin to exact a toll. His weight will decline. Hunger will intensify until it is nearly as excruciating as the agony of mortal wounds. The hunger will become a craving. The craving will become a desperate need.
        He considers retreating, but he is so close. So close. They are on the run. Increasingly isolated. They cannot hold out against him.
        If he perseveres, in minutes they will all be dead.
        Besides, his hatred and rage are as great as his hunger. He is frantic for the sweet satisfaction that only extreme violence can assure.
        On the movie screen of his mind, homicidal images flicker enticingly, bullet-shattered skulls, brutally hammered