“NO!” Aunt Lyssa screamed. But Mr. Patel was gone.

Roger swung the beam in the direction where the dark, cloaked shape had been. Nothing was there. He swung the flashlight beam back and forth wildly.

“Maddy,” he said, in a choked voice. “Where’s it gone?”

Suddenly something reached over my shoulder and knocked the flashlight from his hands.

“Madeline, child of Canonchet, I am here,” a cold, inhuman voice whispered from behind me.

26

NEIMPAUG

I AM HERE.

It had spoken my name. It was the final time for me to hear those words. Its game was over. The Whisperer had come to claim my life. I turned around. Roger’s flashlight had been knocked to the ground, but it still cast off enough light for me to see into the darkness that loomed over me. There was a face there. A pale, bitter face with deep, blood-red eyes, white eyebrows, a nose and cheeks as sharp as the knife blades that glittered from its hand. It was not an Indian face. No Narragansett ever had a face as devoid of humanity as that, even during those long-ago years when our warriors grimly sought revenge for the slaughter of our families. No. It was a face of darkness and steel and dry stone. There was no more emotion in that face than there was in those knives held in its hand, razor-sharp blades whose tips were red with blood. Mr. Patel’s blood.

All the fear I’d been feeling, even the smallest residue of it, left me in that moment. I felt a tingling at the base of my spine, the kind you feel sometimes when there is electricity in the air.

“Mauchag,” I said, my voice as calm and steady as the beat of a drum. “No. I am here.”

I felt the gaze of those dead eyes on my face as it paused, searching for some sign of fear and weakness. Just at that moment, Roger did the only thing he could think to do. Remembering what I had said to him about the Whisperer’s hatred of bright light, Roger pulled out of his pocket the laser pointer I’d taken from Aunt Lyssa’s desk and shot a sharp beam of red light directly into the creature’s face.

“Arrrssshh!”

With an angry hiss, the Whisperer lifted up its cloak to block that painful ray, whose brief touch seemed to have left a red welt on its cheek. Its attention was turned away just long enough for me to raise and aim the cylinder Aunt Lyssa had taken from her purse when she entered her house and sensed that something was wrong. She must have still had it clutched in her hand even after the Whisperer had knocked her unconscious, only dropping it as she was dragged along the tunnel. I pressed the button, emptying the entire can of pepper spray into that evil face.