Which meant that tonight was the longest night of the year. And all of this mystical activity at Fenster's over the past couple of days indicated that the barrier between dimensions had already been pierced and weakened, so to speak, and that the store was the epicenter of whatever was coming through the dark veil tonight.
"Someone is actively helping this demon," said Max. "Someone is inviting it here. That is terribly dangerous."
So, naturally, we had decided to stay in the store after closing and hide in the dark to confront it.
Actually, I was just hoping to confront Elspeth, who struck me as the most likely person to try raising a deadly solstice demon, given her interest in death, her flirtation with vampirism, and her easy access to Fenster's after hours, as a family member and a stockholder.
Of course, Arthur was another possibility. Lopez had influenced me more than I liked to admit with his sheepish "least likely person" theory. But Arthur seemed sad and harmless, whereas there was something genuinely disturbing about Elspeth, though she was also adolescent and seemingly ineffectual. She was a grown woman who appeared to live under her father's thumb as if she were still fifteen. She was the sort of person who'd had the time to be at The Vampyre night after night for weeks, since she had no job, vocation, or personal life to occupy her.
That somehow struck me as a ripe personality for falling into the mad notion of raising a solstice demon for kicks.
But it wouldn't be a kick. According to Max, these creatures were horribly destructive; people had been sensible to fear them for millennia.
I was scared by the prospect of the three of us taking on this thing alone and without preparation, but Max had reassured me. "It is a relatively simple matter to prevent a solstice demon from entering this dimension and to force it to return to hell-or some abstract variation of that concept-where it belongs."
"Okay, what's the secret?" Jeff asked.
"There is no secret," Max said. "It's the same tool that has been used for millennia."
"Fire!" I guessed.
"And light," Max added. "That is how solstice demons are kept out of this dimension. Fire and light on the darkest nights of the year."
So after closing, we had gone sneaking up to the home and garden department on the fifth floor (I'd never even known it was there until Twinkle mentioned it tonight), careful to avoid being seen by the occasional-very occasional-security guard, and we had collected flashlights, strobe lights, and patio torches. Although there had been menacing mystical activity in several areas of the store, Max believed that Nelli's increasingly erratic behavior when investigating the fourth floor suggested that Solsticeland itself would be the site of the dimensional rift.
It was a fitting setting, since the entire exhibit was murky even when all the operational lights were on. It was always supposed to seem like the darkest night of the year in Solsticeland. We planned to throw the main switch for the operational lights when the time came, to help illuminate the scene . . . but that certainly wouldn't suffice, Max had said. Hence the additional lights collected from elsewhere.
So Max, Jeff, and I huddled together nervously in the throne room with our torches and bright lights. We planned to make the demon, when it tried to break through to this dimension, feel like it was entering our world on the pitcher's mound during a night game at Yankee Stadium-which should force it to turn around immediately and go back to where it damn well belonged.
It seemed like a workable theory-right up until about 11:00 PM, roughly an hour before we were expecting trouble, when the first stuffed teddy bear in the toddler's play area started cackling madly as it raced across the floor of Solsticeland toward us, fangs bared, eyes glowing red.
I shrieked and fumbled with my flashlight, my hands shaking so hard that I dropped it. Jeff turned his strobe light on the possessed bear.
It keeled over instantly and lay there silent and inert.
"Oh, thank God," I said, shocked and trembling with reaction. "Is it-arrggh!"
Another one came rushing at us, then another-then another!
Then a dozen little Chef Chéries appeared out of the dark, having freed themselves from their packaging. They were chattering and cackling, racing toward us in their porn aprons with their little kitchen knives in their clawed hands. We shone our lights on them, but as fast as they lost animation and fell, others rose and appeared to replace them.
If we shone our lights one way, something attacked us from the other direction. I was screaming my head off, terrified, turning on flashlight after flashlight, then fighting off leaping, shrieking, stinking, drooling toys as I tried to light the patio torches.
"Esther!" Jeff screamed. "Watch out!"
I turned in the direction of his horrified gaze and saw an old-fashioned mannequin of Santa Claus coming at me, looking exactly as little Jonathan had described him to me yesterday morning-eyes glowing, claws reaching for me, fangs dripping with saliva. He had entered this area from the North Pole-where, to my horror, I saw other displays coming to life, too. Maniacal elves were heading in this direction, bloodlust in their glowing eyes, evil grins on their sharp-toothed, drooling mouths.
Sweet old Mrs. Claus was racing toward us, grinning with homicidal intent, shrieking, "Kill . . . kill . . . kill you! I want flesh! And blood!"
She chased me, cackling and screeching, as I ran around in circles, trying to light my patio torch. I'd lined up a row of flashlights to keep the Chef Chéries and teddy bears under control, but I had nothing left to defend myself from the elves, Santa, and Mrs. Claus if I couldn't get this torch lighted.
Max was fighting off demonic toys from every direction as best he could with his mystical power, but I recalled with a sinking heart that fire was his weakest element-and we hadn't anticipated an attack like this. We had expected to face one big demon that would cower when we showered it with light. Not dozens-hundreds?-of attackers from all over Solsticeland who were replacing each other as fast as Max could strike them down with his Latin incantations, flaming spears of light, and powerful waves of invisible force knocking them back like a giant, unseen hand. They still came at us, in wave after wave.
"Turn on the lights!" Jeff was screaming, pounding on the main power switches. "The lights!"
The Solsticeland lights were on. They were just too dim to affect our attackers.
I'd always thought the dim light in here was a terrible idea, I thought furiously. Now it was going to get me killed!
I got a torch lighted-and then I did the only thing I could think of to forestall annihilation. I started setting things on fire-starting with the hideous gold lamé curtains in the Hanukkah display. If we could create our own massive bonfire, as the ancients had done for millennia, maybe we could hold off our attackers.
"It's working, Esther!" Max shouted, realizing what I was attempting. "It's working!"
The room was filling with bright, fiery light! As it did so, the demonically possessed toys, dolls, stuffed animals, and mannequins started keeling over, falling down onto the floor, inert and harmless.
"Stop!" Jeff shouted. "Stop, Esther!"
"What?" I set a Christmas tree on fire.
I heard Jeff coughing and turned around to look at him. A small mountain of dead toys and elf mannequins lay in front of him, but he was coughing hard as smoke billowed toward him from the hideous Hanukkah exhibit, which was now entirely in flames. I realized the whole room was filling with smoke as well as with light.
"Oops."
The smoke alarms went off at that moment, screeching shrilly overhead. They were industrial strength, intended to alert the whole department store to the fire. We couldn't even hear each other shouting over their high-pitched clamoring.
A moment later, the sprinkler system came on, drenching us in water. The sprinklers also started dousing the fire. We all picked up strobe lights, terrified the demonic toys would rise and renew their attacks . . . but nothing happened.
I heard yelling behind me and whirled in that direction, pointing my strobe light at what I thought was another attack.
Then I realized that powerful flashlights were pointing at me. I also realized that the voices were shouting, "Hands up! Hands UP!"
I dropped my strobe light and squinted against the lights shining in my eyes. I gradually made out the shape of several security guards. Three of them were pointing flashlights at me. One was pointing a gun.
"Oh . . . no," I said.
They, of course, saw two elves and Diversity Santa, standing amidst a mountainous wreck of ruined toys and vandalized displays, in the smoldering wreckage of the fire we had started inside Fenster & Co.
17
"You know what's interesting about this?" Max said.
Jeff asked, "There's something interesting about this?"
"What's interesting is that we're not dead."
"Fascinating," Jeff said wearily.
"I need to use the bathroom again," I said. "Sir?"
"Let the next guy take you," he said. "It's almost the end of my shift."
We had been locked up inside the holding cell on the sixth floor at Fenster's for more than eighteen hours. I strongly suspected this wasn't legal; but since they were treating us humanely (food, water, bathroom visits, a television), and since I wasn't at all eager to face the police-let alone Lopez-I was disinclined to rock the boat.