‘Hush,’ Rideout said. ‘All of you, hush.’

They hushed. Rideout closed his eyes. His lips moved silently. Twenty seconds ticked past on Kat’s watch, then thirty. Her hands were damp with perspiration. She wiped them one at a time on her sweater, then took hold of the broom again. We look like people gathered at a deathbed, she thought.

Outside, the wind snarled along the gutters.

Rideout opened his eyes and leaned close to Newsome.

‘God, there is an evil outsider in this man. An outsider feeding on his flesh and bones. Help me cast it out, as Your Son cast out the demons from the possessed man of the Gadarenes. Help me speak to the little green god of agony inside Andrew Newsome in your own voice of command.’

He leaned closer. He curled the long fingers of one arthritis-swollen hand around the base of Newsome’s throat, as if he intended to strangle him. He leaned closer still, and inserted the first two fingers of his other hand into the billionaire’s mouth. He curled them, and pulled down the jaw.

‘Come out,’ he said. He had spoken of command, but his voice was soft. Silky. Almost cajoling. It made the skin on Kat’s back and arms prickle. ‘Come out in the name of Jesus. Come out in the names of all the saints and martyrs. Come out in the name of God, who gave you leave to enter and now commands you to leave. Come out into the light. Leave off your gluttony and come out.’

There was nothing.

‘Come out in the name of Jesus. Come out in the names of the saints and martyrs.’ His hand flexed slightly, and Newsome’s breath began to rasp. ‘No, don’t go deeper. You can’t hide, you small evil. Come out into the light. Jesus commands you. The saints and martyrs command you. God commands you to leave off dining on this man and come out.’

A cold hand gripped Kat’s upper arm and she almost screamed. It was Melissa. Her eyes were huge. Her mouth hung open. In Kat’s ear, the housekeeper’s whisper was as harsh as sandpaper. ‘Look.’

A bulge like a goiter had appeared in Newsome’s throat just above Rideout’s loosely grasping hand. It began to move slowly mouthward. Kat had never seen anything like it in her life.

‘That’s right,’ Rideout almost crooned. His face was streaming with sweat; the collar of his shirt had gone limp and dark. ‘Come out. Come out into the light. You’ve done your feeding, you small thing of darkness.’

The wind rose to a scream. Rain that was now half sleet blasted the windows like shrapnel. The lights flickered and the house creaked.

‘The God that let you in commands you to leave. Jesus commands you to leave. All the saints and martyrs—’

He let go of Newsome’s mouth, pulling his hand back the way a man does when he’s touched something hot. But Newsome’s mouth stayed open. More: it began to widen, first into a gape and then into a soundless howl. His eyes rolled back in his head and his feet began to jitter. His urine let go and the sheet over his crotch went as dark as Rideout’s sweaty collar.

‘Stop,’ Kat said, starting forward. ‘He’s having a seizure. You have to st—’

Jensen yanked her back. She turned to him and saw his normally ruddy face had gone as pale as a linen napkin.

Newsome’s jaw had dropped all the way to his breastbone. The lower half of his face disappeared into a mighty yawn. Kat heard temporomandibular tendons creak as knee tendons did during strenuous physical therapy: a sound like dirty hinges. The lights in the room stuttered off, on, off, then on again.

‘Come out!’ Rideout shouted. ‘Come out!’

In the darkness behind Newsome’s teeth, a bladderlike thing rose. It was pulsing.

There was a rending, splintering crash and the window across the room shattered. Coffee cups fell to the floor and broke. Suddenly there was a branch in the room with them. The lights went out. The generator started up again. No burp this time but a steady roar. When the lights came back, Rideout was lying on the bed with Newsome, his arms flung out and his face planted on the wet patch in the sheet. Something was oozing from Newsome’s gaping mouth, his teeth dragging grooves in its shapeless body, which was stippled with stubby green spikes.

Not a tennis ball, Kat thought. More like one of those Kooshes the kids play with.

Tonya saw it and fled back down the hall with her head hunched forward, her hands locked at the nape of her neck, and her forearms over her ears.

The green thing tumbled onto Newsome’s chest.

‘Spray it!’ Kat screamed at Jensen. ‘Spray it before it can get away!’ Yes. Then they would put it in the specimen bottle and screw the lid down tight. Very tight.

Jensen’s eyes were huge and glassy. He looked like a sleepwalker. Wind blew through the room. It swirled his hair. A picture fell from the wall. Jensen pistoned out the hand holding the can of pepper spray and triggered the plastic nub. There was a hiss, then he leaped to his feet, screaming. He tried to turn, probably to flee after Tonya, but stumbled and fell to his knees. Although Kat felt too dumbfounded to move – to even stir a hand – part of her brain must still have been working, because she knew what had happened. He had gotten the can turned around, and instead of pepper-spraying the thing that was now oozing through the unconscious Reverend Rideout’s hair, Jensen had sprayed himself.

‘Don’t let it get me!’ Jensen shrieked. He began to crawl blindly away from the bed. ‘I can’t see, don’t let it get me!’

The wind gusted. Dead leaves tore free of the tree branch that had come through the window and swirled around the room. The green thing dropped from the nape of Rideout’s creased and sunburned neck onto the floor. Feeling like a woman underwater, Kat swiped at it with the bristle end of the broom. She missed. The thing disappeared under the bed, not rolling but slithering.

Jensen crawled headfirst into the wall beside the doorway. ‘Where am I? I can’t see!’

Newsome was sitting up, looking bewildered. ‘What’s going on? What happened?’ He pushed Rideout’s head off him. The reverend slid bonelessly from the bed to the floor.

Melissa bent over him.

‘Don’t do that!’ Kat shouted, but it was too late.

She didn’t know if the thing was truly a god or just some weird kind of leech, but it was fast. It shot out from under the bed, rolled along Rideout’s shoulder, onto Melissa’s hand, and up her arm. Melissa tried to shake it off and couldn’t. Some kind of sticky stuff on those stubby little spikes, the part of Kat’s brain that would still work told the part – the much larger part – that still wouldn’t. Like the glue on a fly’s feet.

Melissa had seen where the thing came from and even in her panic was wise enough to cover her own mouth with both hands. The thing skittered up her neck, over her cheek, and squatted on her left eye. The wind screamed and Melissa screamed with it. It was the cry of a woman drowning in a kind of pain the one-to-ten charts in hospitals can never describe. Melissa’s agony was well over one hundred – that of someone being boiled alive. She staggered backwards, clawing at the thing on her eye. It was pulsing faster now, and Kat could hear a low, liquid sound as the thing resumed feeding. It was a slushy sound.

It doesn’t care who it eats, Kat thought. She realized she was walking toward the screaming, flailing woman.

‘Hold still! Melissa, hold STILL!’

Melissa paid no attention. She continued to back up. She struck the thick branch now visiting the room and went sprawling. Kat dropped to one knee beside her and brought the broom handle smartly down on Melissa’s face. Down on the thing that was feeding on Melissa’s eye.

There was a splatting sound, and suddenly the thing was sliding limply down the housekeeper’s cheek, leaving a wet trail of slime behind. It moved across the leaf-littered floor, intending to hide under the branch the way it had hidden under the bed. Kat sprang to her feet and stepped on it. She felt it splatter beneath her sturdy New Balance walking shoe. Green stuff shot out in both directions, as if she had stepped on a balloon filled with snot.