Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [151]
“Poor you,” she replied, snapped the gun stock to her shoulder, and blew a hole right through his chest. The whole front of his shirt exploded in a gruesome red shower and the demon was knocked backward onto the shadow-streaked lawn.
Except that a moment later, he wasn’t there at all. He simply disappeared, fading away into the ether. Then abruptly he reappeared six feet farther to the right, unharmed, standing there looking at her, laughing softly.
“Your aim was a little off.” He smirked.
Feeders raced back and forth, darting toward her with lightning-quick rushes, frantic with hunger. She realized at once what had happened. It wasn’t the demon she had fired at. It was an illusion he had created to fool her.
“Good-bye, Evelyn,” he whispered.
His hand lifted in a casual gesture, drawing her eyes to his, and she felt a crushing force close about her chest. She wrenched her eyes away, brought up the shotgun, and fired a second time. Again, the demon’s chest blew apart and he was flung away. The feeders ran in all directions, clawing their way onto the porch only to leap off again, lantern eyes wild with expectation. Evelyn was already swinging the barrel of the shotgun about, searching for him, firing both left and right of where he had been, the heavy shot ripping the air, lead pellets hammering into the fence posts at the gate and into the trunks of the old shagbarks and the graceful limbs of the spruce. Lights started to come on in the houses closest to hers.
“Damn you!” she hissed.
She racked the slide a fifth time, chambering a fresh shell, swung the barrel to her right, where the feeders were massed thickest, and fired into their midst, the shotgun booming. Her arms and shoulders throbbed with weariness and pain, and her rage burned in her throat and chest like fire. One shell left. She saw him climbing over the railing at the other end of the porch, pumped the final shell into the firing chamber, swung the shotgun left, and fired down the length of the house.
Reload!
She backed against the screen door and fumbled for the shells in her dress pocket, kicking at the empties underfoot. He was right in front of her then, reaching out his hand. She felt his fingers on her chest, pressing. The shotgun fell away as she sought to claw his face.
Then the feeders swarmed over her, and everything disappeared in a bright red haze.
George Paulsen ran from the Sinnissippi Townhomes and the screams of Enid Scott, his hands covering his face. He burst through the screen door of the Scott apartment with such force that he ripped it from its hinges and tore the skin from his hands. There was blood on him everywhere, and the stink of it was in his nostrils. But it was not from the screams or the blood or even the ragged, broken form he had left crumpled on the living-room floor that he fled.
It was from Evelyn Freemark.
She was right in front of him, a shimmering image come out of the ether, dark and spectral. No matter which way he turned, there she was. She whispered at him, repeating the words she had spoken earlier that day in the park, her dark warning of what would happen if he laid a hand on Enid Scott or her children. He screamed against the persistent sound of it, tearing at the air and at his own face. He ran mindlessly across the barren dirt yard into the roadway, desperate to escape.
The dark things bounded after him, the creatures that had appeared as he beat aside Jared Scott’s futile defenses. They had encouraged him to hurt the boy; they had wanted the boy to suffer.
But now they were coming after him as well.
He could feel their hunger in