Mr. Murder

howled, tumbled off Paige, rolled against the south wall, but at once came onto its knees, then into a standing position, cat-quick and unpredictable.
        As the thing was still tumbling, Paige scrambled to the kids, crowding them behind her.
        Marty lunged for the discarded gun on the landing, inches beyond the other side of the open door. He crouched and, with his right hand, grabbed the Mossberg by the barrel.
        Paige and one of the girls yelled a warning.
        He didn't have time to reverse his grip on the weapon and pump a round into the chamber. He rose and turned in one movement, issuing a savage scream not unlike the sounds his adversary had been making, and swung the shotgun by the barrel.
        The Mossberg stock hammered into The Other's left side, but not hard enough to shatter any ribs. Marty had been forced to wield it with one hand, unable to use his left, and the jolt of the blow rang back on him, sent pain through his chest, hurting him worse than it hurt The Other.
        Wrenching the Mossberg from Marty, the look-alike didn't turn the gun to its own use, as if it had devolved into a subhuman state in which it no longer recognized the weapon as anything more than a club. Instead, it pitched the Mossberg away, whirled it over the waist high wall into the snowy night.
        "Look-alike" no longer applied. Marty could still see aspects of himself in that warped countenance, but, even in the murky dusk, no one would mistake them for brothers. The shotgun damage wasn't primarily what made the difference. The pale face was strangely thin and pointed, bone structure too prominent, eyes sunken deep in dark circles, cadaverous.
        The Mossberg was still spinning into the falling snow when the thing rushed Marty and drove him into the north wall. The waist-high concrete cap caught him across the kidneys so hard it knocked out of him what little strength he had managed to dredge up.
        The Other had him by the throat. Replay of the upstairs hall, yesterday, Mission Viejo. Bending him backward as he'd been bent over the gallery railing. Farther to fall this time, into a darkness blacker than night, into a coldness deeper than winter storms.
        The hands around his neck felt not like hands at all. Hard as the metal jaws of a bear trap. Hot in spite of the bitter night, so hot they almost scorched him.
        It wasn't just strangling him but trying to bite him as it had tried to bite Paige, striking snakelike, hissing. Growling in the back of its throat. Teeth snapped shut on empty air an inch from Marty's face.
        Breath sour and thick. The stench of decay. He had the feeling it would devour him if it could, rip out his throat and take his blood.
        Reality outstripped imagination.
        All reason fled.
        Nightmares were real. Monsters existed.
        With his good hand, he got a fistful of its hair and pulled hard, jerking its head back, frantic to keep its flashing teeth away from him.
        Its eyes glittered and rolled. Foaming spittle flew when it shrieked.
        Heat poured off its body, and it was as hot to the touch as the sun-warmed vinyl of a car seat in summer.
        Letting go of Marty's throat but still pinning him against the parapet, The Other reached back and seized the hand with which he had clutched its hair. Bony fingers. Inhuman. Hard talons. It seemed fleshless, brittle, yet increasingly fierce and strong, and it almost crushed his hand before he let go of its hair. Then it whipped its head to the side and bit his forearm, ripped the sleeve of his jacket but not his flesh.
        Tore at him again, sank teeth into his hand, he screamed. It grabbed his ski jacket, pulling him off the parapet as he tried to lean into the void to escape it, snapped at his face, teeth clashing a fraction of an inch short of his cheek, rasped out a single tortured word, "Need," and snapped at his eyes, snapped, snapped at his eyes.
        "Be at peace, Alfie."
        Marty registered the words but initially wasn't clear-headed enough either to realize what they meant or to grasp that the voice was one he had never heard before.
        The Other reared its head back, as if about to make its final lunge for his face. But it held that posture, eyes wild, skeletal face as softly luminous as the snow, teeth bared, rolling its head from side to side, issuing a thin wordless sound as if it wasn't sure why it was