. Did you see the lights just . . . ?”
I really hadn’t wanted to do this, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I made a little bit of a production of turning the “gun” to point at the liquor bottles behind the counter, gathered up my will, and screamed, “Ka-bang! Ka-bang!”
My verbal incantations have actually gotten more sophisticated and worldly over the years, not less.
I know, right? It shocks me, too.
The spell was just basic kinetic energy, and it didn’t really hit much harder than a baseball thrown by a high school pitcher—a regular pitcher, not like Robert Redford in The Natural. That wasn’t really enough power to threaten anyone’s life, but it was noisy and it was more than enough energy to smash a couple of bottles. They shattered with loud barking sounds and showers of glass and booze.
“Holy crap!” shouted the cashier. I saw that his name tag read STAN. “Dude!” He flinched down, holding his arms up around his head. “Don’t shoot!”
I pointed the paper bag at him and said, “Give me all the money, Stan!”
“Okay, okay!” Stan said. “Oh, God. Don’t kill me!”
“Money!” I shouted.
He turned to the register and started fumbling at it, stabbing at the keys.
As he did, I sensed a movement behind me, an almost subliminal presence. It’s the kind of thing you expect to experience while standing in a line—the silent pressure of another living being behind you, temporarily sharing your space. But I wasn’t standing in a line, and I whirled in panic and shouted, “Ka-bang!” again.
There was a loud snap of sound as pure force lashed through the air and the glass door to a freezer of ice cream shattered.
“Oh, God,” Stan moaned. “Please don’t kill me!”
There was no one behind me. I tried to look in every direction at once and more or less succeeded.
There was no one else in the store. . . .
And yet the presence was still there, on the back of my neck, closer and more distinct than a moment before.
What the hell?
“Run!” said a resonant baritone.
I turned and pointed the paper bag at the pair of video games.
“Run!” said the voice on the Sinistar game. “I live! I . . . am . . . Sinistar!”
“Don’t move,” I said to Stan. “Just put the money in a bag.”
“Money in a bag, man,” Stan panted. He was practically sobbing. “I’m supposed to do whatever you want, right? That’s what the owners have told us cashiers, right? I’m supposed to give you the money. No argument. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, my eyes flicking nervously around the place. “It’s not worth dying for, is it, Stan?”
“Got that right,” Stan muttered. “They’re only paying me five dollars an hour.” He finally managed to open the drawer and started fumbling bills into a plastic bag. “Okay, dude. Just a second.”
“Run!” said the Sinistar machine. “Run!”
Again, the insubstantial pressure against the back of my neck increased. I turned in a slow circle, but nothing was there—nothing I could see, at any rate.
But what if there was something there? Something that couldn’t be seen? I had never actually seen something summoned from the netherworld, but Justin had described such beings repeatedly, and I didn’t think he’d been lying. Such a beast would make an ideal hunter; just the sort of thing to send out after a mouthy apprentice who refused to wear his straitjacket like a good boy.
I took two slow steps toward the video game, staring at its screen. I didn’t pay attention to the spaceship or the asteroids or the giant, disembodied skull flying around. I didn’t care about the flickers of static that washed across the screen as I got closer, something inside its computer reacting to my presence. No. I paid attention to the glass screen and to the reflection of the store that shone dimly upon it.
I identified my outline on it, long and thin. I could see the vague outlines of the store as more shadowy shapes—aisles and end caps, the counter and the door.
And the Thing standing just inside the door.
It was huge. I mean, it was taller and broader than the door was. It was more or less humanoid. The proportions were wrong. The shoulders too wide, the arms too long, the legs crooked and too thick. It was covered in fur or scales or some scabrous, fungal amalgamation of both. And its eyes were empty, angled pits of dim violet light.
I felt my hands begin to shake. Tremble. Actually,