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.Willott, a resident of the Santa Ynezvalley in Solvang, not Svenborg-had been a successful author of novelsfor young from adults, turning out fifty-two titles before his death in, at the age of petals eighty.His most popular and enduring book, byfar, had been a fantasynches adventure about a haunted old mill and aboy who discovered that the ghosts were actually aliens from anotherworld and that under the milliosing pond was a spaceship which had beenthere for ten thousand years., deck "No," Jim said softly but with some anger, "no, this makes nosense, this can't be right."Holly recalled a moment from the dream in which she had been in LenaIronheart's body, climbing the mill stairs.When she had reached the top, she had found ten-year-old Jim standingwith his hands fisted at his sides, and he had turned to her and said,"I'm scared, help me, the walls, the walls" At his feet had been ayellow candle in a blue dish.Until now she'd forgotten that beside thedish lay a hardcover book in a colorful dustjacket.It was the same dustjacket reproduced on the lectern: The BlackWindmill."No," Jim said again, and he turned away from the plaque.He staredaround worriedly at the breeze-ruffled trees.Holly read on and discovered that twenty-five years ago, the very yearthat ten-year-old Jim Ironheart had come to town, The Black Windmill hadbeen made into a motion picture.The New Svenborg Mill had served asthe primary location.The motion-picture company had created a shallowbut convincing millpond around it, then paid to restore the land afterfilming and to establish the current pocket park.Still turning slowly around, frowning at the trees and shrubs, at thegloom beneath them that the overcast day could not dispel, Jim said,"Something's coming."Holly could see nothing coming, and she believed that he was just tryingto distract her from the plaque.He did not want to accept theimplications of the information on it, so he was trying to make her turnaway from it with him.The movie must have been a dog, because Holly had never heard of it.Itappeared to have been the kind of production that was big news nowherebut in New Svenborg and, even there, only because it was based on a bookby a valley resident.On the historical marker, the last paragraph ofcopy listed, among other details of the production, the names of thefive most important members of the cast.No big box-office draws hadappeared in the flick.Of the first four names, she recognized only M.Emmet Walsh, who was a personal favorite of hers.The fifth cast member was a young and then-unknown Robert Vaughn.She looked up at the looming mill."What is happening here?" she said aloud.She lifted her gaze to thedismal sky, then lowered it to the photo of the dustjacket for Willott'sbook."What the hell is happening here?"In a voice quaking with fear but also with an eerie note of desire, Jimsaid, "It's coming!"She looked where he was staring, and saw a disturbance in the earth atthe far end of the small park, as if something was burrowing towardthem, pushing up a yard-wide hump of dirt and sod to mark its tunnel,moving fast, straight at them.She whirled on Jim, grabbed him."Stop it!""It's coming," he said, wide-eyed."Jim, it's you, it's only you.""No.not me.The Enemy." He sounded half in a trance.Holly glanced back and saw the thing passing under the concrete walkway,which cracked and heaved up in In its wake."Jim, damn it!"He was staring at the approaching killer with horror but also with, shethought, a sort of longing.One of the park benches was knocked over as the earth bulged then sankunder it.The Enemy was only forty feet from them, coming fast.She grabbed Jim by the shirt, shook him, tried to make him look at her."I saw this movie when I was a kid.What was it called, huh?Wasn't it Invaders From Mars, something like that, where the aliens opendoors in the sand and suck you down?"She glanced back.It was thirty feet from them."Is that what's going to kill us, Jim? Something that opens a door inthe sand, sucks us down, something from a movie to give ten-year-oldboys nightmares?"Twenty feet away.Jim was sweating, shuddering.He seemed to be beyond hearing anythingHolly said.She shouted in his face anyway: "Are you going to kill me and yourself,suicide like Larry Kakonis, just stop being strong and put an end to it,let one of your own nightmares pull you in the ground?"Ten feet.Eight."Jim!"Six.Four.Hearing a monstrous grinding of jaws in the ground under them, sheraised her foot, rammed the heel of her shoe down across the front ofhis shin, as hard as she could, to make him feel it through his sock.Jim cried out in pain as the ground shifted under them, and Holly lookeddown in horror at the rupturing earth.But the burrowing stoppedsimultaneously with his sharp cry.The ground didn't open.Nothingerupted from it or sucked them down.Shaking, Holly stepped back from the ripped sod and cracked earth onwhich she had been standing.Jim looked at her, aghast."It wasn't me.It can't have been."Back in the car, Jim slumped in his seat.Holly folded her arms on the steering wheel, put her forehead on herarms.He looked out the side window at the park.The giant mole trail wasstill there.The sidewalk was cracked and tumbled.The bench lay onits side.He just couldn't believe that the thing beneath the park had been only afigment of his imagination, empowered only by his mind.He had been incontrol of himself all his life, living a Spartan existence of books andwork, with no vices or indulgences.(Except a frighteningly convenientforgetfulness, he thought sourly.) Nothing about Holly's theory washarder for him to accept than that a wild and savage part of him, beyondhis conscious control, was the only real danger that they faced.He was beyond ordinary fear now
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