The Gates (Samuel Johnson vs. the Devil #1)(33)

“It feels like static electricity,” said Tom. He moved his hand farther forward, as though to touch the glass, but Maria reached out to stop him.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It’s just static,” said Tom.

“No,” said Maria, “it’s not.”

She pointed at the frame of the window. There, barely visible to the naked eye, was the faintest blue glow.

Maria moved on, following the wall of the house.

“Where’s she off to?” said Tom.

Samuel didn’t know, but he decided to follow Maria nonetheless. Tom, not wanting to be left alone, was soon trotting along behind.

The Abernathys’ house stood in the center of a large garden, so that there was nothing to stop someone walking from the front of the house to the back. Maria was pointing at the windows as she went.

“There!” she said softly. “And there!”

If they concentrated hard, each time they looked they saw that faint blue glow around the window frames.

“I think it might be a kind of alarm,” said Maria. “They’ve secured the place, somehow.”

By this time they had reached the back of the house. To the left of the back door was a kitchen, which was empty. To the right was a living room, with a TV, some couches, and a pair of armchairs. A lamp was lit in the room, casting a square of light upon the lawn.

Together, the three children made their way to the window and peered inside.

? ? ?

Boswell was very unhappy at having his leash tied to a garden gate. Like most dogs, he didn’t like being tied to anything. If you were tied to something, it was hard to fight if a bigger dog came along, and impossible to run away if fighting wasn’t an option. Boswell was not much of a fighter. To be honest, he wasn’t even very good at running away, given his short legs and long body.

But if there was anything worse than having his leash tied to a garden gate, it was having it tied to this particular one. The big house smelled wrong to Boswell. It wasn’t just the stink that the children had also picked up. No, Boswell’s sense of smell was far more sensitive than that of any human. He had twenty-five times more smell receptors than a person, and he could sense odors at concentrations one hundred million times lower than a human could. As he sniffed the air around the big house, drawing it deep down to the receptors at the back of his snout, he picked up hints of tainted meat, of disease, of dead things that shouldn’t be touched, or tasted, or even sniffed for very long for fear of being sick. Lurking behind them all was one smell in particular, one that every animal hated and feared.

It was the smell of burning.

Suddenly Boswell stood up. He had heard something, the sound of footsteps approaching. One of the bad smells started to grow stronger, although it was mixed up with another that wasn’t quite so bad, as though the not-so-bad smell was being used to hide the really bad one. The not-so-bad smell was familiar to Boswell, although that didn’t mean he liked it. It was too strong and sweet and sickly. It reminded him of the scent that sometimes came from Mrs. Johnson, the scent that emerged from some of the little bottles she kept in her bedroom. It smelled of too many flowers.

Even with his poor eyesight Boswell was able to identify the woman as soon as she turned the corner. He had already built up a picture of her using his nose, and now his worst fears were confirmed.

It was the nasty lady, the one who had brought the Darkness.

Boswell began to whine.

? ? ?

There were three people, two men and a woman, sitting in the living room, the walls of which were covered with a strange orange mold that was spreading from the carpet and extending toward the ceiling. The mold covered the chairs on which the three people were sitting, as though they were rotting and their decay was slowly infecting the room. They were not moving, or speaking, but they all had strange, fixed smiles on their faces, like people who had seen something that only someone with a very strange sense of humor would think was funny. Samuel recognized the men as Mr. Abernathy and his friend Mr. Renfield. The woman was Mrs. Renfield.

They had changed since last he had seen them. They appeared fatter; bloated, as if by a great internal swelling. He could see Mr. Abernathy the most clearly. Mr. Abernathy’s skin was a gray-green color, and there were blisters on it. He looked so sick that Samuel wondered if Mr. Abernathy might actually be worse than sick. Despite the time of year, the room was filled with flies, and Samuel knew immediately that the people in the room stank badly. Samuel thought he saw a fly land on one of Mr. Abernathy’s eyeballs and crawl across it, a black speck against the milky white of the eye. Mr. Abernathy didn’t even blink.

It was Tom who voiced what Samuel had been thinking.

“Are they . . . dead?” he asked.

As he spoke, the fly buzzed away from Mr. Abernathy’s eyeball. At the same instant a long tongue unrolled from Mr. Abernathy’s mouth, like a party favor. It was pink, and covered with little spines that looked sharp and sticky. It plucked the fly from midair, then rolled back into Mr. Abernathy’s mouth. He chewed on the fly for a moment before swallowing it down.

“Oh, I think I’m going to be sick,” said Maria.

“Was that a tongue?” asked Tom. “That was a tongue! People don’t have tongues that long. Things have tongues that long.”

Then they heard the sound of frantic barking from the front of the house, and knew that they were in trouble.