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Screa carpet of serpents and fell a them

Snakes thin as whips, snakes thick and reen, yellow and brown, plain and patterned, redeyed, yelloweyed, soues fluttering, hissing, hissing Had to be drea, bit hi its fangs deep, blood brihtmare, except for the pain

He had never felt pain in a drea filled his left hand, and then a sharper stabbing agony shot like an electrical charge through his wrist and all the way along his forear Somehow But where had they cohty of theh his shirt sleeve and pierced his left forearh his sock, raked teeth down his ankle

He scrambled to his feet, and the snake that had bitten his arm fell away, as did the one at his ankle, but the one with its fangs through his left hand hung fast, as if it had stapled itself to hirabbed it, tried to jerk it loose The flash of pain was so intense, whitehot, that he alht to his bleeding hand

A turmoil of snakes hissed and coiled around hilance, or hear thee to identify the other species, wasn’t sure which were poisonous, or even if any of the the ones that had already bitten hi to bite if he didn’t move fast

He snatched a meat cleaver from a wall rack of knives When he slammed his left arm down on the nearest counter, the relentless blacksnake flopped fulllength across the tile counter top Ricky swung the cleaver high, brought it down, chopped through the snake, and the steel blade rang off the cera head still held fast to his hand, trailing only a few inches of the black body, and the glittering eyes see him, alive Ricky dropped the cleaver and atte curved teeth out of his flesh He shouted and cursed, furious with pain, kept prying, but it was no use

The snakes on the floor were agitated by his shouting

He plunged toward the archway between the kitchen and the hall, kicking snakes out of his way before they could coil and spring at him Some were already coiled, and they struck, but his heavy, loosefitting khaki pants foiled them

He was afraid they would slither over his shoes, under a pants cuff, up and under one of the legs of his khakis But he reached the hall safely

The snakes were behind hi Two tarantulas had fallen out of the snack cabinet intoøthe herpetological night over the scales

Thump!

Ricky jumped in surprise

Thue noise, which had plagued hi, with the spiders and snakes

Thuaame any more This was deadly serious I in a dream, but serious

Thu or even tell for sure if it came from above or below him Windows reverberated, and echoes of each blow vibrated hollowly in the walls He sensed that so he did not want to encounter

Gasping, with the head of the blacksnake still dangling from his left hand, Ricky turned away from the kitchen toward the front door at the end of the hall

His twicebitten ar heart No good, dear Jesus, a racing heart spread the poison faster, if there was any poison What he had to do was calo to a neighbor’s house, call 911, and get eency medical attention

THUMb!

He could have used the telephone in his bedrooo in there He didn’t trust his own house any more, which was nuts, yes, crazy, but he felt the place had coainst hi the back of a bucking earthquake, alainst the wall

The cerain toppled off the hall table that he had set up as a shrine like all of the shrines his utshot, he had been reduced by fear to his ainst the cruelties of the world

The statue crashed to the floor, shattered at his feet

The heavy redglass container with the votive candle bounced on the table, causing goblin shadows to dance across the wall and ceiling

THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP!

Ricky o steps fro creaked ominously, pushed upward, and cracked almost as loudly as a thunderclap He stu s the floor as if it were an eggshell For a ed boards limpse what had been born into the hallway

Then Ricky saw a hteen inches under the floor of the house In spite of standing below Ricky, the guy loo His untaled and dirty, and the visible portions of his face were grossly scarred His black raincoat billowed like a cape around hih the broken boards

Ricky kneas looking at the vagrant who had appeared to Harry out of a ind Everything about hiliin, paralyzed by fear and by the certainty that he had goneaway or had turned and tried to run for the rear door, he would not have escaped, for the vagrant claquick as any striking serpent He seized Ricky, swept him off the floor with such unhuman power that any resistance was pointless, and slah to crack the plaster and his spine

Face to face, washed by the vagrant’s foul breath, Ricky gazed into those eyes and was too terrified to scream They were not the pools of blood that Harry had described They were not really eyes at all

Nestled in the deep sockets were two snake heads, two s

Why me? Ricky wondered

As if they were a pair of jackinthebox fright figures, the snakes sprang frorant’s sockets and bit Ricky’s face

Between Laguna Beach and Dana Point, Harry drove so fast that even Connie, lover of speed and risktaking, braced herself and made wordless noises of dismay when he took some of the turns too sharply

They were in his own car, not a departency beacon to stick on the roof He didn’t have a siren either; however, the coast highas not heavily used at tenthirty on a Tuesday night, and by pounding the horn and flashing the headlights, he was able to clear a way through what little obstructive traffic he encountered

"Maybe we should call Ricky, warn hiuna

"Don’t have a car phone"

"Stop at a service station, convenience store, soure his phone won’t work anyway"

"Why won’t it?"

"Not unless Ticktock wants it to work"

They shot up a hill, rounded a curve too fast The rear tires dug up gravel froainst the undercarriage and fuel tank The right rear buuardrail, and then they were back on the pave braked

"So let’s call Dana Point Police," she said

"The e’re , if we don’t stop to call, we’ll be there before they could ht be able to use the backup"

"Won’t need backup if we’re too daet there"