That giggle again.
Louis turned and was greeted by the sight of his wife, to whom he had once carried a rose in his teeth, lying halfway down the hall, dead. Her legs were splayed out as Jud's had been. Her back and head were cocked at an angle against the wall. She looked like a woman who has gone to sleep while reading in bed.
He walked down toward her.
Hello, darling, he thought, you came home.
Blood had splashed the wallpaper in idiot shapes. She had been stabbed a dozen times, two dozen, who knew? His scalpel had done this work.
Suddenly he saw her, really saw her, and Louis Creed began to scream.
His screams echoed and racketed shrilly through this house where now only death lived and walked. Eyes bulging, face livid, hair standing on end, he screamed; the sounds came from his swollen throat like the bells of hell, terrible shrieks that signaled the end not of love but of sanity; in his mind all the hideous images were suddenly unloosed at once. Victor Pascow dying on the infirmary carpet, Church coming back with bits of green plastic in his whiskers, Gage's baseball cap lying in the road, full of blood, but most of all that thing he had seen near Little Cod Swamp, the thing that had pushed the tree over, the thing with the yellow eyes, the Wendigo, creature of the north country, the dead thing whose touch awakens unspeakable appetites.
Rachel had not just been killed.
Something had been... something had been at her.
(! CLICK!) That click was in his head. It was the sound of some relay fusing and burning out forever, the sound of lightning stroking down in a direct hit, the sound of a door opening.
He looked up numbly, the scream still shivering in his throat and here was Cage at last, his mouth smeared with blood, his chin dripping, his lips pulled back in a hellish grin. In one hand he held Louis's scalpel.
As he brought it down, Louis pulled back with no real thought at all. The scalpel whickered past his face, and Gage overbalanced. He is as clumsy as Church, Louis thought. Louis kicked his feet from under him. Gage fell awkwardly, and Louis was on him before he could get up, straddling him, one knee pinning the hand which held the scalpel.
"No," the thing under him panted. Its face twisted and writhed. Its eyes were baleful, insectile in their stupid hate. "No, no, no-"
Louis clawed for one of the hypos, got it out. He would have to be quick. The thing under him was like a greased fish and it would not let go of the scalpel no matter how hard he bore down on its wrist. And its face seemed to ripple and change even as he looked at it. It was Jud's face, dead and staring; it was the dented, ruined face of Victor Pascow, eyes rolling mindlessly; it was, mirrorlike, Louis's own, so dreadfully pale and lunatic. Then it changed again and became the face of that creature in the woods-the low brow, the dead yellow eyes, the tongue long and pointed and bifurcated, grinning and hissing.
"No, no, no-no-no-"
It bucked beneath him. The hypo flew out of Louis's hand and rolled a short way down the hail. He groped for another, brought it out, and jammed it straight down into the small of Gage's back.
It screamed beneath him, body straining and sunfishing, nearly throwing him off.
Grunting, Louis got the third syringe and jammed this one home in Gage's arm, depressing the plunger all the way. He got off then and began to back slowly down the hallway. Cage got slowly to his feet and began to stagger toward him.
Five steps and the scalpel fell from its hand. It struck the floor blade first and stuck itself in the wood, quivering. Ten steps and that strange yellow light in its eyes began to fade. A dozen and it fell to its knees.
Now Cage looked up at him and for a moment Louis saw his son-his real son-his face unhappy and filled with pain.
"Daddy!" he cried, and then fell forward on his face.
Louis stood there for a moment, then went to Gage, moving carefully, expecting some trick. But there was no trick, no sudden leap with clawed hands. He slid his fingers expertly down Gage's throat, found the pulse, and held it. He was then a doctor for the last time in his life, monitoring the pulse, monitoring until there was nothing, nothing inside, nothing outside.
When it was gone at last, Louis got up and sauntered down the hail to a far corner. He crouched there, pulling himself into a ball, cramming himself into the corner, tighter and tighter. He found he could make himself smaller if he put a thumb in his mouth and so he did that.
He remained that way for better than two hours... and then, little by little, a dark and oh-so-plausible idea came to him. He pulled his thumb from his mouth.
It made a small pop. Louis got himself (hey-ho let's go) going again.