guest room right at the very end where they had installed Lenny. On the way he passed the 
door to the guest room in which John and Jennifer had been attacked. It had already been 
stripped and cleaned, and Jack had locked it. All the same, he stopped and tried the 
handle, just to make sure. It was locked.
   He flicked down the light switch halfway along the corridor, but that didn't work, 
either. Perhaps one of the fuses had blown. That occasionally happened on hot summer 
nights, when everybody in Chestnut Hill switched on their air-conditioning all at once, 
and created a localized power surge.
   'Lenny?' called Jack. 'Lenny, it's Uncle Jack. Is everything okay?'
   He opened the white-painted door of Lenny's bedroom. It was so dark in there that he 
might as well have been wearing a black felt executioner's hood over his head. He waited, 
listening. He thought he could make out Lenny's harsh, regular breathing; but he thought 
he could make out an echo, almost - as if somebody else was there, too, breathing in the 
same rhythm as Lenny to avoid detection.
   Jack stood in the doorway and listened and listened, and still couldn't make up his 
mind whether he could distinguish one person breathing, or two.
   'Lenny?' he whispered, and took a single step into the room.
   It was then that he realized there was something there. Something cold; something 
huge. Something that wasn't Lenny at all; something that wasn't even human, but was 
somehow alive. He felt a cold shiver all the way down his back, and he dampened his 
shorts with a single involuntary squirt of urine. Fear, genuine fear. The kind of fear 
that paralyzes people when buildings collapse on top of them. His heart almost stopped.
   Who's there?' he demanded. His voice sounded weak and flat. 'Is there somebody there?' 
The choice before him was terrifying. Either he could grope his way farther into the room 
to see what it was that was waiting for him here; or else he could retreat quickly and 
pretend to Nancy that there was nothing here at all, and then wait for it to do to Lenny 
whatever it had entered the house to do. But after it had finished with Lenny? Maybe 
them, too, if he didn't get them out of here quick.
   'Listen, buddy,' he said out loud, in a voice that he hoped was confident and 
intimidating, 'I don't know who the hell you are or what the hell you're doing here, but 
my suggestion to you is that you get out of here pronto, the way you came in, and that 
you never come back here again. I called the police already. They're on their way. Give 
them three minutes, pal, and they're going to be clicking those cuffs on you pretty 
goddamned quick.'
   He stopped talking. He realized that while he was talking, the resonance of his own 
words inside his skull prevented him from hearing what it was doing. He listened. Had it 
come closer? Was there anything in the room at all, apart from him and Lenny and his own 
abject terror?
   But he was sure that he could feel a coldness, an emptiness; a vacuum of extreme 
hostility.
   'I'm going to give you five,' he said unsteadily. Five, why five? Why not give it five 
million and run like hell? 'When I've finished counting five, you've got two choices, do 
you understand me? Do you understand me?'
   Again, there was nothing but that light, constricted breathing - that breathing that 
might be nothing more than an echo of Lenny's breathing. Only this and nothing more.
   'One,' he counted. From downstairs, he heard Nancy calling to him.
   'Jack? Are you all right? How's Lenny?' I
   Two,' he said, then shouted, 'Nancy, honey, don't come up! Everything's fine! I'll be 
down in just a moment!'
   'Jack? What did you say? Jack!'
   Three,' said Jack.
   He wasn't sure, but he thought he could feel the coldness intensifying. He thought he 
could see something rising in the darkness: huge, distorted, like a man's shadow when he 
stands in front of a lamp. Something that moved toward him with whispers of intolerable 
dread.
   'Deep into that darkness peering, long 1 stood there wondering, fearing.
   Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.'
   'Four,' he said, and his voice was no more audible than a leaf turning in the wind.
   'Five -'
   And at that instant Nancy came marching purposefully along the corridor, saying, 
'Jack, for goodness' sake, what are you playing at!'
   Something slashed out of the darkness with an audible rush of air. Jack felt something 
brush his face, something cold and sharp, and stepped back in bewilderment. He turned to 
Nancy.
   All that Nancy could see in the dimness was that his cheeks were hanging in inch-wide 
bloody ribbons and that one of his eyes had been split exactly in half. She said, 'Jack?' 
unable to believe what she was seeing; but then Jack was wrenched back into the bedroom 
in a spray of blood, and Nancy screamed and screamed and dropped to her knees on the 
carpet.
   'Jack! Jack! What's happening? Jack!'
   There was a moment's dreadful pause. Then, from the bedroom doorway, something black 
and huge emerged. Nancy could do nothing but kneel in the corridor, staring at it in 
abject terror.
   'Oh, God,' she prayed; and then the claws whistled like knives, and her head bounced 
from her shoulders and rolled all the way along the corridor, emptying out blood like an 
overturned bucket. The claws whistled again, and her blue silk pantsuit was torn into 
scarlet shreds.
   Lenny's eyes opened suddenly, as if somebody had shaken him awake. He was trembling, 
and his pajamas were wet with sweat. He lay still for a very long time, not daring to 
lift his head.
   His nightmare gradually shrank from his mind. The blackness. The power. The 
overwhelming urge to cut everything to pieces. He reached up and felt his face, and he 
was almost surprised to find that he was still the same boy.
   But what if it had all been true? What if it had really happened - the way it had 
happened with Jennifer? He had dreamed the dream, and when he had woken up she was really 
dead.
   He lifted himself up on his elbow and strained his eyes to see into the darkness. He 
found the bedside lamp, and switched it on. And then he saw the bright squiggles of blood 
on the corridor wall outside. A Jackson Pollock painting in human gore.
   He licked his lips. They were dry as chrysalises. 'Mr. Felling?' he called. 'Mr. 
Felling?'
   There was no reply. The house was silent. And even before he reached his bedroom door 
and saw Jack and Nancy ripped into bloody strings of meat, Lenny knew for certain that 
the nightmare had all been true. 
   
   
   Six
   
   John was sitting propped up in a wheelchair in the hospital garden, enjoying the 
early-morning sun and the conversation of his fellow patients. There were five of them