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Abruptly they were in the real car, cast back in ti toward the across the double yellow line, bearing down on theh speed Sam cried out--"Mom!"--but she couldn’t evade the pickup this time any o It canet and slaht it reat roar pierced by the shriek of shreddingwent black Then, when he swae He was face to face with his dead an to screahtmare also failed to wake him

Noas in a hospital, as he’d been after the accident, for that had been the first of the six tier a boy, however, but a grown ency surgery because he had been shot in the chest during the saical team labored over him, he rose out of his body and watched them at work on his carcass He was amazed but not afraid, which was just how he had felt when it had not been a dreaht, toward the Other Side This time he knehat he would find at the other end because he had been there before, in real life instead of in a dreaain, didn’t want to look Beyond But he h the tunnel, bulleted through it, his terror escalating with his speed Having to look again at what lay on the Other Side orse than his dream confrontations with Scott, worse than the battered and one-eyed face of his mother, infinitely worse (faster, faster), intolerable, so he began to scream (faster) and screaht up on the sofa and pinched off the cry before it left his throat, An instant later he beca roohis 38 revolver from the holster, which he had taken off and laid beside the sofa

It was Moose

"Hey, boy"

The dog chuffed softly

Sam reached out to pat the dark head, but already the Labrador was inally less black than the interior of the house, the ere visible as fuzzy-gray rectangles Moose went to one at the side of the house, putting his paws on the sill and his nose to the glass

"Need to go out?" Sah they had let hione to bed

The dog idity

"So out there?" Sam wondered, and even as he asked the question, he knew the answer

Quickly and gingerly he crossed the dark roo down, and joined the dog at the

The rain-battered night seemed at its blackest in this last hour before dawn, but Sam’s eyes were adjusted to darkness He could see the side of the neighboring house, just thirty feet away The steeply sloping property between the two structures was not planted with grass but with a variety of shrubs and several starburst pines, all of which swayed and shuddered in the gusty wind

He quickly spotted the two Boogeymen because their movement was in opposition to the direction of the wind and therefore in sharp contrast to the storetation They were about fifteen feet froh Sam could discern no details of the yet queerly graceful gait that they were not ordinary er pines, one of them looked toward the Talbot house, and Sam saw its softly radiant, utterly alien amber eyes For a moment he was transfixed, frozen not by fear so much as by amaze straight at the , as if it could see hiht toward hiainst the wall under the , and pulled Moose doith hier, for he didn’t bark or whine or resist in any way, but lay with his belly to the floor and allowed himself to be held there, still and silent

A fraction of a second later, over the sounds of wind and rain, Saainst which he crouched A soft scuttling sound Scratching

He held his 38 in his right hand, ready in case the thing was bold enough to sh the

A few seconds passed in silence A few more

Sam kept his left hand on Moose’s back He could feel the dog shivering

Tick-tick-tick

After long seconds of silence, the sudden ticking startled Saone away

Tick-tick-tick-tick

It was tapping the glass, as if testing the solidity of the pane or calling to thethere

Tick-tick Pause Tick-tick-tick

5

Tucker led his pack out of theporch of the decrepit house The boards creaked under their weight One loose shutter was banging in the wind; all the others had rotted and torn off long ago

He struggled to speak of his intentions, but he found it very difficult to rerowls and low brute ed to say, "… here … hide … here … safe …"

The other male seemed to have lost his speech entirely, for he could produce no words at all

With considerable difficulty, the female said, "safe … here … home… "

Tucker studied his two co their night adventures Earlier, the female had possessed a feline quality-sleek, sinuous, with cat ears and sharply pointed teeth that she revealed when she hissed either in fear, anger, or sexual desire Though so of the cat was still in her, she had becoe head drawn forward into a muzzle more canine than feline She had lupine haunches, as well, and feet that appeared to have resulted fro of man and wolf, not paws but not hands either, tipped with claws longer and more murderous than those of a real wolf The othera few insectile features with the general forely conforreement, Tucker had beco to his rule, his followers evidently had used his appearance as a model for their own He realized that this was an important turn of events, maybe even an ominous one

He did not knohy it should spook hier had theca concern of shelter demanded his attention

… here … safe … here

He led theh the broken, half-open door, into the front hall of thehouse The plaster was pocked and cracked, and in soh like the rib cage of a half-deco strips of wallpaper were peeling off, as if the place was shedding its skin in the process of a metamorphosis as draone