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26

JAKE REACHED OUT, PUT his hands on the splintery gate, and pushed It swung slowly open on screaes Ahead of him was an uneven brick path Beyond the path was the porch Beyond the porch was the door It had been boarded shut

He walked slowly toward the house, heart telegraphing fast dots and dashes in his throat Weeds had grown up between the buckled bricks He could hear theainst his bluejeans All his senses seemed to have been turned up two notches You&039;re not really going in there, are you? a panic-stricken voice in his head asked

And the answer that occurred to his serve the Bean on the lawn read

ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING UNDER PENALTY OF LAW!

The yellowing, rust-stained square of paper nailed to one of the boards crisscrossing the front door was more succinct:

BY ORDER OF NYC HOUSING AUTHORITY THIS PROPERTY CONDEMNED

Jake paused at the foot of the steps, looking up at the door He had heard voices in the vacant lot and now he could hear theain but this was a choir of the damned, a babble of insane threats and equally insane proht it was all one voice The voice of the house; the voice of so unpeaceful sleep

He thought briefly of his father&039;s Ruger, even considered pulling it out of his pack, but what good would it do? Behind him, traffic passed back and forth on Rhinehold Street and a wo hands with that boy and bring in the wash, but here was another world, one ruled by souns could have no power

Be true, Jake - stand

"Okay," he said in a low, shaky voice "Okay, I&039;ll try But you better not drop an to mount the porch steps

27

THE BOARDS WHICH BARRED the door were old and rotten, the nails rusty Jake grabbed hold of the top set at the point where they crossed each other and yanked They caain He tossed them over the porch rail and into an ancient flowerbed where only witchgrass and dogweed grew He bent, grasped the lower crossing and paused for a h the door; the sound of sorily from deep inside a concrete pipe Jake felt a sick sheen of sweat begin to break out on his cheeks and forehead He was so frightened that he no longer felt precisely real; he seemed to have become a character in someone else&039;s bad dream

The evil choir, the evil presence, was behind this door The sound of it seeped out like syrup

He yanked at die lower boards They came free easily

Of course It wants ry, and I&039;m supposed to be the main course

A snatch of poetry occurred to hi Ms Avery had read to theht of modern man, as cut off from all his roots and traditions, but to Jake it suddenly seemed that the man who had written that poe different fro behind you/Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;/I will show you

"I&039;ll show you fear in a handful of dust," Jake muttered, and put his hand on the doorknob And as he did, that clear sense of relief and surety flooded hi that this was it, this time the door would open on that other world, he would see a sky untouched by s and industrial smoke, and, on the far horizon, not the eous unknown city

He closed his fingers around the silver key in his pocket, hoping the door was locked so he could use it It wasn&039;t The hinges screa cylinders as the door opened The smell of decay struck Jake like a physical bloood, spongy plaster, rotting laths, ancient stuffing Below these smells was another - the smell of some beast&039;s lair Ahead was a dank, shadowy hallway To the left, a staircase pitched and yawed its crazy way into the upper shadows Its collapsed banister lay splintered on the hallway floor, but Jake was not foolish enough to think it was just splinters he was looking at There were bones in that litter, as well - the bones of small animals Some did not look precisely like ani; he kneould never suo further if he did He paused on the threshold, screwing himself up to take the first step He heard a faint, muffled sound, very hard and very rapid, and realized it was his own teeth chattering in his head

Why doesn&039;t soht wildly Why doesn&039;t so on the sidewalk shout "Hey, you! You&039;re not supposed to be in there - can&039;tcha read?"

But he knehy Pedestrians stuck mostly to the other side of this street, and those who caer

Even if someone did happen to look, they wouldn&039;t see me, because I&039;m not really here For better or worse, I&039;ve already left my world behind I&039;ve started to cross over His world is somewhere ahead This

This was the hell between

Jake stepped into the corridor, and although he screa shut behind hi slammed, he wasn&039;t surprised

Down deep, he wasn&039;t surprised at all

28

ONCE UPON A TIME there had been a young woman named Detta Walker who liked to frequent the honky-tonks and roadhouses along Ridgeline Road outside of Nutley and on Route 88 down by the power-lines, out-side of A says, she kne to use theht cheap dress that looked like silk but wasn&039;t and dance with the white boys while the band played all those ofay party tunes like "Double Shot of My Baby&039;s Love" and "The Hippy-Hippy Shake" Eventually she would cut one of the honkeys out of the pack and let hi lot There she would reat soul-kissers was Detta Walker, and no slouch with the old fingernails, either) until he was just about insane and then she&039;d shut him down What happened next? Well, that was the question, wasn&039;t it? That was the gareat Some of theh she had been slapped upside the head, punched in the eye, spat upon, and once kicked in the ass so hard she had gone sprawling in the gravel parking lot of The Red Windone home with the blue balls, every damned ofay one of them Whichchampion, the undefeated queen Of what? Of thehtass honkey motherfuckers

Until now

There was no way to withstand the derab, no car to tu to run back into, no cheek to slap, no face to claw, no balls to kick if the ofay sue

The demon was on her and then, in a flash, it - he - was in her

She could feel it - hih she could not see it - him She could not see its - his - hands, but she could see their work as her dress tore violently open in several places Then, suddenly, pain It felt as though she were being ripped open down there, and in her agony and surprise she screa

"I&039;et about ht!"

But she wasn&039;t For the first time since Detta had strode onto the sexual battlefield at the age of thirteen, she was losing A horrid, engorged coldness plunged into her; it was like being fucked with an icicle