The Chase Page 0,17

Nauthiz, a rune of restraint.

It had been a natural thing to do. Let a kid alone in a cellar where a bookcase has been moved to expose a secret door, and what would anyone expect? What would be the harm?

It depended. If your grandfather was like any grandfather, a sweet old guy who liked gardening and golf, no harm. But if your grandfather was a dabbler in the black arts, it might be another story. And if your grandfather had actually succeeded in his ambition to call up spirits from another world, to trap them ... and if the door you opened was the one that held them in ...

The consequences had been unimaginable.

Jenny had opened that door and seen a whirling, seething mixture of ice and shadows. And in the shadows-eyes.

Dark eyes, watching eyes, sardonic, cruel, amused eyes. Ancient eyes. The eyes of the Others, the Shadow Men.

They were called different names in different ages, but always their essential nature came through. They were the ones who watched from the shadows. Who sometimes took people to-their own place.

The thing Jenny remembered most about the eyes was that they were hungry. Evil, powerful, and ravenous.

"They'd love to get a tooth in you," Julian had told Dee. "All my elders, those ancient, bone-sucking, lip-licking wraiths."

Suddenly the water seemed more cold than cool. Jenny swam over to the steps and got out, shivering.

In her room she rubbed herself dry until she stopped shivering. Then she put on a T-shirt and crawled into bed. But the vision of glowing eyes haunted her until she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

She woke up very suddenly when the phone rang.

The alarm, she thought, confused, and reached for the clock by her bedside. But the ringing went on.

Her window was dark. The clock in her hand showed a glowing red 3:35 a.m.

The ringing went on, frighteningly loud, like a siren.

Her parents would pick it up any minute now. But they didn't. Jenny waited. The ringing went on.

They had to pick it up. Not even Joey slept that soundly. Each burst of noise was like white lightning in the dark and silent house.

Chills ran over Jenny's skin.

She found that she had been counting unconsciously. Nine rings. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Shattering the stillness.

Maybe it was Dee, maybe she and Michael had found out something important and for some reason hadn't been able to call until now.

Heart pounding, Jenny picked up the receiver.

"A isht," a voice whispered.

Jenny froze.

"A ... isht..."

The formless electronic noise blurred the word. Jenny could only make out the vowel sounds and the soft shush at the end. A as in amble, then shht. It didn't sound exactly like vanished anymore.

She wanted to speak, but she couldn't. She could only clutch the phone and listen.

"A isht..."

Damaged? No, that was even farther off. A-isht. Am-ish. Amished.

Oh my God Oh God oh God oh God...

Sheer black terror swept through her, and every hair on her body erected. She felt her eyes go wide and tears spring to them. In that instant she heard, really heard what the voice was saying. She knew.

Not vanished. It sounded like vanished, but it wasn't. It was something much worse. The whispery, distorted voice with the odd cadence was saying famished.

Famished.

Jenny threw the phone as hard as she could across the room. She was on her feet, her skin crawling, body washed with adrenaline. Famished. Famished. The eyes in the closet. The Shadow Men.

Those evil, ravenous eyes ...

The better to eat you with, my dear.

Chapter 6

It was that psychic," Dee said promptly. "She looked like a case of peroxide on the brain to me."

"No," said Michael. "You know what it really is?" Jenny thought he was going to make a joke, but for once he was serious. "It's battle fatigue. We've all got it. We're stressed to the max, and we're seeing-and hearing-things that aren't there."

It was the next day. They were all sitting on the grassy knoll-all but Tom, of course. Jenny was surprised that Zach had shown up. After what she'd said to him at lunch yesterday, she'd have thought he'd have withdrawn from them all. But he was in his place, long legs folded under him, ashy-blond head bent over his lunch.

Jenny herself had no appetite. "The calls weren't hallucinations," she said. It was all she could do to keep her voice steady. "Okay, the last one might have been a dream-I woke up my parents screaming, and they said they didn't hear the phone ring. But the

other times-I was