Its voice was still a whisper, but so loud, so rasping that it hurt our ears as it filled the dark cave and echoed through its passages. I’ll never forget that voice, its mocking, cold power, its absolute hatred for everything that life and love and light mean. All that and more was expressed in that one word it spoke, including a terrible hunger that could never be satisfied.

“You know who I am.”

The Whisperer in the Dark spoke slowly, moving a little closer to us with each word, gliding as if it was flowing, not walking. Aside from those flame-red eyes, its face was still hidden, wrapped in its cowl of darkness, but I could imagine the ironic smile on its grim lips. It came to me then that the Whisperer in the Dark was playing with us the way a cat plays with a mouse. I’d once asked my mother why a cat does that, why it doesn’t just eat its prey once it has been caught.

“It enjoys it too much to end it quickly,” my mother said. “It likes the taste of fear.”

Threatening us, tasting our fear, that was its desire almost as much as its intention to take our lives. It was playing, just as it had played with me since that first telephone call, using its power of fear to send its voice not just through the air but through the telephone lines. It could take us at any moment, but instead it held back, held back like a movie monster gloating over its victim. And perhaps that desire to deepen our fear was its weakness if it gave us time to think, to act in some way. But what way?

The darkness in front of us raised an arm. At the end of it, something glittered in the beam of Mr. Patel’s flashlight—a handful of blades held above us like a scythe.

Suddenly Mr. Patel moved, more quickly than I have ever seen anyone move before.

“AH-YAH,” he shouted, hurling himself at that shape, actually striking it and pushing it back. He raised the flashlight like a club to strike, but that iron-clawed fist swung back too fast, knocking the flashlight from his grasp to spin and land, still lit, still lighting our little scene of heroism and desperation.

The swirl of shadow and light was so sudden, so confusing, that it was hard to see clearly what happened next. But I saw more than I wanted to see. I saw Mr. Patel stagger back to the edge of the pit, trying to keep his balance. I saw the Whisperer in the Dark surge forward like a black tide. I saw that awful, clawed hand cut through the air with murderous intent. Mr. Patel’s head disappeared from sight and he fell backward into the hole.

Roger stooped to pick up his own flashlight and shone it toward the pit.