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The woman turned from theand continued upward toward the unearthly shrieks, cries, and whispers that echoed down to her with the fluctuant light Around her the limestone walls pounded with the tripartite bass beat, as if the mill were alive and had a oing to die up there Holly shouted, but the woman could not hear her Holly was only an observer in her own dream, not an active participant, unable to influence events

Step by step Higher

The iron-bound timber door stood open

She crossed the threshold Into the high roo in the middle of the room, terrified His small hands, curled in fists, were at his sides A three-inch-diameter decorative candle stood in a blue dish at his feet A hardcover book lay beside the dish, and she gli to look at her, his beautiful blue eyes darkened by terror, the boy said, "I’m scared, help le candle was not producing all of the peculiar glow suffusing the roolimmered in the walls, as if they were not icallyù radiant quartz in shades of a was alive within the stone, soh solid h water

The wall swelled and throbbed

"It’s coht have been a perverse excitement, "and nobody can stop it!" Suddenly it was born out of the air The curve of yshape from a core of foulon a scream, Holly woke

She sat up in bed, so touched her, and she wrenched away froht, she saw that it was only Jio in the Laguna Hills Motor Inn, however, the creature of the drea world It was not co

Directly over the bed The white-painted dryas no longer white or dry, but mottled amber and brown, semitransparent and lu a noxious led to be born into the bedroo’s thunderous three-part heartbeat-lub-dub DUB, lubdub-DUB shuddered through the house

Jim rolled off the bed and onto his feet He had slipped into his pajaht, just as Holly had slipped into the roo halfway to her knees She scra birth sac which the ceiling had beco to breach that containingof all-this apparition was in daylight The plantation shutters had not been co sunshine banded the roo froht, you half expected it

But sunshine was supposed to banish all ainst Holly’s back, pushed her toward the open door to the hallway "Go, get out!" She took only two steps in that direction before the door slammed shut of its own accord As if an exceptionally powerful poltergeist were at work, ain the house, erupted away fro her down

It flew across the bedroom, slammed into the door A dresser and a chair followed that tall chest of drawers, effectively barricading the only exit

The s in the far wall presented an avenue of escape, but they would have to crouch to slip under the increasingly distended central portion of the ceiling Having accepted the illogic of the waking nightreasy and obscenely throbbing pouch, for fear that it would split open as she moved under it, and that the creature within would seize her

Ji bathroo The only as set high and was too small to provide a way out

The bathrooanic transformation that had overcome the bedroom, but they still shook with the triple bass thud of the inhuman heartbeat

"What the hell is that?" he demanded

"The Enemy," she said at once, surprised that he didn’t know "The Ene from the partition that the bath shared with the bedrooan to discolor as if abruptly saturated with red blood, brown bile The sheen of seical surface and began to throb in time with the thunderous heartbeat

Jim pulled her into a corner by the vanity, and she huddled helplessly against hi, she saw a repulsive ots

The thudding heartbeat increased in volu sound None of this could be happening, yet it was, and that soundwith her own eyes, because it was such a filthy sound and so hideously intimate too real for a delusion or a drea burst overhead, showering then with debris

But with that ihtmare was exhausted, and reality finally, fully reasserted itself Nothing h the open door; only the sun-filled bedrooanic when it had burst in upon them, no trace of its transforain The rain of debris included chunks of wallboard, flaked and powdered drywall paste, splinters of wood, and wads of fluffy Fiberglas insulation-but nothing alive

The hole itself was astonishing enough to Holly

Two nights ago, in the ed and rippled as if alive, it had returned to its true composition without a crack No evidence of the dream-creature’s intrusion had been left behind except the scratches in her sides, which a psychologist ht have said were self inflicted When the dust settled, everything ht have been just a fantastically detailed delusion

But thewas no delusion The pall of white dust in the air was real

In a state of shock, Jim took her hand and led her out of the bathroo had not crashed down It was as it had been last night: sainst the door as if washed there by a flood

Madness favored darkness, but light was the kingdo world provided no sanctuary froht offered no sanctuary from unreason, then there was no sanctuary anywhere, anytile sixty-watt bulb dangling from a beam, did not illuminate every corner of that cramped and dusty space

Jied around heating ducts, peered behind each of the two fireplace chi forwhatever had torn apart the bathroo He had no idea what he expected to find Besides the flashlight, he carried a loaded revolver The thing that destroyed the ceiling had not descended into the bathroom, so it had to be in the attic above

However, because he lived with ato store up there under the roof, which left few possible hiding places

He was soon satisfied that those high reaches of his house were untenanted except by spiders and by a small colony of wasps that had constructed a nest in a junction of rafters

Nothing could have escaped those confines, either Aside from the trap door by which he had entered, the only exits fro eaves which was about two feet long and twelve inches high, covered with tightly fitted screens that could be re moved only with a screwdriver Both screens were secure

Part of that space had plank flooring, but in so but insulation lay between the exposed floor studs, which were also the ceiling studs of the roo on those parallel supports, Jim cautiously approached the rupture above the master bathroom He peered down at the debris-strewn floor where he and Holly had been standing

What in the hell had happened? At last conceding that he would find no answers up there, he returned to the open access and climbed down into the second-floor linen closet He folded up the accordion ladder into the closet ceiling, which neatly closed off the attic entrance

Holly aiting for hi," he said

"I knew there wouldn’t be"

"What happened here?" "It’s like in the dream"