Jenny's mind in a matter of seconds. She didn't need to reason it out. She knew. It was as if a crust had fallen away from her mind, and she saw the truth as a complete, coherent whole. All she could think was, So that's it. I remember now.
The eyes were still rushing toward her. Her loose hair whipped around her face in the wind, her own breath coating it with ice. She couldn't move.
"Jenny!"
Her name called in a terrible voice. Before she could turn, she was caught around the waist and lifted-lifted as if she were five years old and weighed thirty-seven pounds.
"Grandpa," she gasped and threw her arms around his neck.
He was smaller than she remembered, too-and just now his tired, kind face was etched in absolute horror. Jenny tried to cling to him, but he slung her around, thrusting her behind the bookcase.
"Nauthiz! Nauthiz!" he shouted.
He was trying to shut the door, tracing over the rune on the front with stabs of his finger. His slashing motions as he traced the X became more and more violent, and his voice was the most dreadful thing Jenny had ever heard. "Nauthiz!"
The door wouldn't shut. The old man's shouts were becoming screams of despair.
A white light was coming from the closet. A white storm, with tendrils and lashings of mist. Dark strands were interwoven with the white. The tendrils were writhing around Jenny's grandfather.
Jenny tried to scream. She couldn't.
The wind blasted out, blowing her grandfather's sparse hair. All his clothes were rippling. Frost flowed out on the ceiling, down to the desk, to the ground-level windows. It spread like crystals growing along the walls.
Tears froze in Jenny's eyes. She seemed to be locked in the form of a stricken five-year-old. She couldn't make herself go to him.
The voices that spoke from the mist were as cold as the wind. Like bells made of ice.
"We won't be put back____"
"You know the laws... ."
"We have a claim, now... ."
And her grandfather's voice, full of desperate fear. "Anything else. You can have anything else-"
"She broke the rune____"
"... set us free..."
"... and we want her."
"Give her to us." This was all the voices together.
"I can't!" her grandfather said. It was almost a groan.
"Then we'll take her____"
"We'll embrace her____"
"No, let's keep her," said a voice full of subtle, elemental music. Like water running over rock. "I want her."
"We all want her____"
"... We're all hungry."
"No," said Jenny's grandfather.
A voice like an ice floe cracking said, "There's only one way to change the consequences. Make a new bargain."
Jenny's grandfather's jaw worked, and he backed away from the closet a few steps. "You mean ..."
"A life for a life."
"Someone must take her place."
"Come now, that's only fair."
The voices were delicate, reasonable. Evil. Only the water-voice seemed to have an objection.
"I want her... ." it argued.
"Ah, youth," said a voice as slow as a glacier, and all of them laughed like Christmas bells.
"I'm ready," said Jenny's grandfather.
"No!" Jenny screamed.
She could move at last-but it was too late. She remembered everything now. She had been cowering behind the bookcase, her five-year-old mind probably better able to deal with the reality of the Shadow Men than an adult's. They were the monsters that scare every five-year-old. The Bogeymen. The Bad Things. And they were taking her grandfather.
She'd jumped up then and run, as she was running now. Toward the closet. Toward the white tendrils of mist that were coiling around her grandfather, toward the ice storm of eyes. She'd heard her grandfather screaming that day as the storm dragged him into the closet. She'd reached for him, catching his flailing hand. She'd been screaming, too, just as she was screaming now, and the freezing wind had been howling around her, full of angry, evil, ravenous voices.
For one instant, then as now, it had been a horrible tug-of-war. She, Jenny, clinging on to her grandfather's hand with all her strength. They, in the ice storm, pulling him away. Into the depths of a closet that had become endless, a tunnel reaching to some other world.
She could never hope to stop them, of course. She succeeded only in being dragged along the floor, her clothes torn, her shoes lost, her bare feet raking up ice.
They were both going in.
Then her grandfather slapped her hands away.
Hitting and scratching, he tore out of her grip. Jenny fell on the floor, the ice cold under her bare legs. She was directly in front of the closet, and she had a perfect view of the screaming,