Joan crouched behind him and looked over his shoulder. The slide gleamed like silver. Three-quarters of the way down, twin blades stood upright, as if hunting knives had been plunged in through the back of the metal ramp. The blades and the lower portion of the slide were smeared with blood.
“Somebody went down it,” Dave whispered.
Joan squeezed his shoulders.
Not Debbie, she thought. It wasn’t Debbie. Please.
“The others must’ve gone a different way,” she said.
“I don’t know. After the first kid, the rest of them might’ve gotten past the knives okay.”
“Crawling over him?” Or her.
“Yeah.”
“God.”
“Let’s see about that door,” Dave said.
He gave the flashlight to Joan. She stood in the center of the hallway, left hand at her hip, shining the light on the door, right arm extended, aiming, finger ready on the trigger of her Smith & Wesson. She knew by the door’s hinges that it would swing outward when it opened.
Dave positioned himself to the right of the door, his weapon raised, its muzzle close to the frame. Reaching across his body with his left hand, he turned the knob and tugged.
The door stayed shut.
He looked at Joan and shook his head.
“Why don’t we shoot it open?” she said.
“If it’s locked, the kids didn’t go this way.”
“Maybe it locked behind them.”
“I think they took the slide.”
“Well, we can’t.”
A bolt snicked.
Dave flinched. Joan’s heart lurched.
He threw the door wide.
“Freeze!” Joan snapped.
The bloody thing on its knees in the doorway smiled. “Don’t shoot, Joanie.”
“We couldn’t get him out of there if we wanted to,” Tanya said.
“And we don’t want to,” Liz added.
“I sure hate to just leave him for the trolls,” Cowboy said.
“We left Shiner,” Jeremy reminded him.
“And Karen,” Tanya added. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure a way to get them out. We’ll put in a call to the cops or something. But first we’ve gotta get ourselves out of here in one piece.”
“Yeah, I reckon.”
“You want this back?” Jeremy asked, offering the cleaver.
“You keep it. I’ve got my toad-sticker.” Cowboy turned around and said, “Adios, there, Samuel.”
They started walking down the hallway, Tanya and Jeremy in the lead, Cowboy and Liz close behind them.
They stopped at a set of double doors.
Jeremy’s stomach knotted.
Tanya muttered, “Shit.”
Jeremy kicked one of the doors. It flew open, and he lurched backward as he glimpsed someone in the candlelit room ahead of him—a skinny kid, red with blood, holding a candle. As the door swept back at him, he realized that the kid was himself.
He pushed the door wide and held it open.
Saw himself holding it open.
The room, about three times the width of the hallway, was paneled with mirrors. The candles standing upright on its floor reminded Jeremy of the spikes in the barrel. The surrounding mirrors multiplied their number and filled the room with tongues of brilliant fire.
No mirrors on the ceiling. Up there were grates. For the spectators.
The mirrors in front of Jeremy showed only him and candles—no waiting trolls. He stepped through the door.
As the others came in, he wandered beneath the nearest grate and saw a dirty bearded face above him. “Hiya, kid. How come y’ain’t dead yet?”
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Scrappy little pisser, ain’t ya?”
Jeremy raised his candle high, stretching upward, rising on tiptoe. Its flame licked up between the metal slats. The troll cried out as his beard caught fire.
“Ha!” Jeremy blurted.
“Good going, Duke!”
Jeremy watched the screaming troll shove himself up. Kneeling in the crawl space above the ceiling, he slapped at his fiery beard, but the flames swept up his face, caught his wild tangle of hair. In seconds his head was a ball of fire.
“How you like it, bitch?” Cowboy yelled.
Jeremy lowered his gaze to the mirrors in front of him. Cowboy, Liz, and Tanya all held candles high, were reaching toward other grates, jumping, shoving fire at the faces of the trolls above them. Liz laughed as she did it. Cowboy snapped curses, let out wild war whoops, called out, “Remember Sam!” Tanya did it in silence, rushing about the floor, dancing among the upright candles, stabbing her flame into the grates. Her sweatshirt flew up as she leapt, baring her tawny scarred belly.
Trolls gasped and shouted. At least a few of them, caught by surprise, squealed as fire found them.
“It’s all right,” Joan murmured. “It’s all right now.” She was on her knees hugging her sister, crying. Debbie clung to her and wept.
Dave’s throat was tight, and he had tears in his own eyes as he watched their reunion.