Night Shift(67)

He screwed the cap off the jar, which had originally held peanut butter, and splashed it within the pentagram.

Something happened in the darkened schoolroom. It was not possible to say exactly what, but the air became heavier. There was a thickness in it that seemed to fill the throat and the belly with grey steel. The deep silence grew, swelled with something unseen.

He did as the old rites instructed.

Now there was a feeling in the air that reminded Jim of the time he had taken a class to visit a huge power station - a feeling that the very air was crammed with electric potential and was vibrating. And then a voice, curiously low and unpleasant, spoke to him.

'What do you require?'

He could not tell if he was actually hearing it or only thinking that he did. He spoke two sentences.

'It is a small boon. What do you offer?'

Jim spoke two words.

'Both,' the voice whispered. 'Right and left. Agreed?'

'Yes.'

'Then give me what is mine.

He opened his pocketknife, turned to his desk, laid his right hand down flat, and hacked off his right index finger with four hard chops. Blood flew across the blotter in dark patterns. It didn't hurt at all. He brushed the finger aside and switched the pocketknife to his right hand. Cutting off the left finger was harder. His range hand felt awkward and alien with the missing finger, and the knife kept slipping. At last, with an impatient grunt, he threw the knife away, snapped the bone, and ripped the finger free. He picked them both up like breadsticks and threw them into the pentagram. There was a bright flash of light, like an old-fashioned photographer's flashpowder. No smoke, he noted. No smell of brimstone.

'What objects have you brought?'

'A photograph. A band of cloth that has been dipped in his sweat.'

'Sweat is precious,' the voice remarked, and there was a cold greed in the tone that made Jim shiver. 'Give them to me.'

Jim threw them into the pentagram. The light flashed.

'It is good,' the voice said.

'If they come,' Jim said.

There was no response. The voice was gone - if it had ever been there. He leaned closer to the pentagram. The picture was still there, but blackened and charred. The sweatband was gone.

In the street there was a noise, faint at first, then swelling. A hot rod equipped with glasspack mufflers, first turning on to Davis Street, then approaching. Jim sat down, listening to hear if it would go by or turn in.

It turned in.

Footfalls on the stairs, echoing.

Robert Lawson's high-pitched giggle, then someone going 'Shhhhh!' and then Lawson's giggle again. The footfalls came closer, lost their echo, and then the glass door at the head of the stairs banged open.

'Yoo-hoo, Normie!' David Garcia called, falsetto.

'You there, Normie?' Lawson whispered, and then giggled. 'Vas you dere, C holly?'

Vinnie didn't speak, but as they advanced up the hall, Jim could see their shadows. Vinnie's was the tallest, and he was holding a long object in one hand. There was a light snick of sound, and the long object became longer still.

They were standing by the door, Vinnie in the middle. They were all holding knives.

'Here we come, man,' Vinnie said softly. 'Here we come for your ass.'

Jim turned on the record player.

'Jesus!' Garcia called out, jumping. 'What's that?' The freight train was coming closer. You could almost feel the walls thrumming with it.

The sound no longer seemed to be coming out of the speakers but from the hall, from down tracks someplace far away in time as well as space.

'I don't like this, man,' Lawson said.

'It's too late,' Vinnie said. He stepped forward and gestured with the knife. 'Give us your money, dad.'

...letusgo...

Garcia recoiled. 'What the hell -, But Vinnie never hesitated. He motioned the others to

spread out, and the thing in his eyes might have been relief. 'Come on, kid, how much you got?' Garcia asked suddenly.

'Four cents,' Jim said. It was true. He had picked them out of the penny jar in the bedroom. The most recent date was 1956.

'You f**kin' liar.'

.leave him alone...

Lawson glanced over his shoulder and his eyes widened. The walls had become misty, insubstantial. The freight train wailed. The light from the parking-lot street-lamp had reddened, like the neon Burrets Building Company sign, stuttering against the twilight sky.

Something was walking out of the pentagram, something with the face of a small boy perhaps twelve years old. A boy with a crew cut.

Garcia darted forward and punched Jim in the mouth. He could smell mixed garlic and pepperoni on his breath. It was all slow and painless.

Jim felt a sudden heaviness, like lead, in his groin, and his bladder let go. He looked down and saw a dark patch appear and spread on his pants.

'Look, Vinnie, he wet himself!' Lawson cried out. The tone was right, but the expression on his face was one of horror - the expression of a puppet that has come to life only to find itself on strings.

'Let him alone,' the Wayne-thing said, but it was not Wayne's voice - it was the cold, greedy voice of the thing from the pentagram. Run, Jimmy! Run! Run! Run!'

Jim slipped to his knees and a hand slapped down on his back, groping for purchase, and found none.

He looked up and saw Vinnie, his face stretching into a caricature of hatred, drive his knife into the Wayne-thing just below the breastbone . . . and then scream, his face collapsing in on itself, charring, blackening, becoming awful.