Half a minute later another guy ran by and said the same thing.
“Where?” Jack hadn’t felt anything.
“Sheep Meadow!”
“But what—?”
The guy was gone, running like a madman.
Curious now, Jack broke into a loping run and cut off the jogging path. He skirted the lake until he reached the wide expanse of grass in the lower third of the park called the Sheep Meadow. He’d heard that real sheep used to graze these fifteen acres as late as the 1930s. In the wan starlight he could make out a ragged, broken line of murmuring people rimming the area. And smack in the center of the meadow, what looked like a pool of inky liquid. But nothing reflected off its surface. A huge circle of empty blackness.
Tar?
Jack paused. Something about that black pool raised his hackles. An instinctive fear surged up from the most primitive parts of his being. He’d experienced something similar when he’d seen his first rakosh. But this was different. This was a hell of a lot bigger.
He forced his feet to move, to carry him toward the pool. He could make out the figures of a couple of people at the edge and they seemed all right, so he guessed it was safe.
As he neared, Jack realized it wasn’t a pool at all. A huge sinkhole, a good hundred feet across, had opened in the middle of the meadow.
He skidded to a halt on the grass.
A hole …
He had a bad history with holes in the earth during the past couple of years. One in Monroe had almost swallowed him, and another in Florida had released some nasty creatures into the Everglades. Both had been connected with the Otherness, and now the Otherness was on the march.
Maybe this was something else, something innocent.
Yeah, right.
Two guys there ahead of him stood on the edge, laughing, jostling each other. Jack could see they were young, dressed head to toe in black, with spiky hair. He stopped behind them. No way he wanted to get that close.
One of the guys on the rim turned and spotted him.
“Hey, dude, c’mon up here. You gotta see this. It’s fuckin’ awesome, man!”
“Yeah!” said the other. “The mother of all potholes!”
They started laughing and elbowing each other again.
Wrecked.
“That’s okay. I can see all I want from here.”
Which was mostly true. In the wash of light from the tall buildings ringing the lower end of the park, Jack could make out a sheer wall on the far side of the hole leading straight down through the sod, the topsoil, and the granite bedrock. The edge of the hole was clean.
He’d seen pictures of sinkholes before on the news, from places like Guatemala where the underground water had been tapped out. But he’d never seen one so perfectly round. This looked like it had been made with a King Kong cookie cutter. Manhattan’s bedrock—he could almost hear his dear, lost Weezy correcting him that it was called “schist”—was near the surface here. Could sinkholes occur in solid granite? Didn’t think so.
Otherness … definitely the Otherness.
The two kids were still fooling around, dancing on the edge, playing macho games. Jack was moving to his right, away from them, trying to position the light-bleed from Central Park West behind him for a better look, when he heard a yelp of terror.
He saw one of the kids leaning forward over the edge, his arms windmilling. Even from Jack’s distance it was plain he was overbalanced and no longer fooling around, but his buddy only stood beside him, laughing at his antics.
His laughter died with the first kid’s scream as he toppled headfirst into the hole.
“Jason! Oh, shit! Jason!”
He lunged for his friend’s foot, missed it, and Jason disappeared into the blackness. His scream was awful to hear, not merely for the blood-chilling terror it carried, but for its length. The cry seemed to go on forever, echoing up endlessly from below as Jason plummeted into the depths. It never really ended. It simply … faded … out …
His friend was on his hands and knees at the edge, looking down into the blackness.
“Oh, fuck, Jason! Where are you?” He turned to Jack. “How deep is this fuckin’ thing?”
Jack didn’t answer. If this one held true to the others he’d seen, it was bottomless.
He stepped to within half a dozen feet of the kid, got down on his belly, and crawled to the edge. He’d seen light deep down in the others—not a bottom, just light … a hazy violet glow. Maybe he’d see that—
Vertigo hit him like a gut punch as he peeked over and saw nothing but impenetrable blackness.
Jack closed his eyes and hung on. And as he did he thought he could still hear Jason screaming down there … way, way down there … fading …
He felt a slight breeze against the back of his neck. Air was flowing into the hole. Into the hole. That meant it had to go somewhere, be open at the other end. He had a good idea where that might be.
And then the earth began to slide away beneath his fingers, beneath his wrists, his forearms. Christ! The rim was giving way.
Jack rolled to his left and back, away from the edge, but he wasn’t fast enough. A Cadillac-sized wedge of earth gave way and crumbled beneath him. He slid downward toward the black maw. With a desperate, panicky lunge he managed to grab a fistful of turf and hang on. His feet kicked empty air and for one breathless moment he felt eternity beckoning from below. Then the toes of his sneakers found the rocky wall. He levered himself up to ground level and scrambled away from the edge as fast as his rubbery knees would carry him.
When he’d gone a good fifty feet he heard a terrified cry and risked a look back. Jason’s buddy had stayed behind and the edge had given way under him. Most of his body had dropped into the hole. Jack could see his head, see his arms and hands tearing at the grass in a losing effort to hold on.
“Help me, man!” he cried in a voice all tears and terror. “God, please!”
Jack started to unbutton his shirt, thinking he might be able to use it as a rope. But before he was halfway done, a huge clump of earth gave way beneath the kid’s hands and he was gone, leaving behind only a fading high-pitched wail.
More earth sloughed off and fell away, narrowing the distance between Jack and the edge. The damn hole was getting bigger.
He looked around. The few people who had been scattered around the perimeter of the Sheep Meadow were now fleeing for the streets. Good idea, Jack thought. A fine idea. He broke into a headlong run and followed them.
And as he ran it occurred to him that a big chunk of Central Park was missing. What was it Glaeken had said last night?
Will you reconsider if Central Park shrinks?
Sure, he’d said.
Jack didn’t remember his high school geometry, so he couldn’t even guess the surface area of that hole, but a helluva lot of the Sheep Meadow was missing. Which meant the park was smaller by that many square feet.
… if Central Park shrinks …
Jack picked up his pace. How had Glaeken known?
He shook his head. Stupid question.
Arms limp at his sides, Rasalom floats within a tiny pocket in the bedrock, a pocket he has made. When he descended approximately a hundred feet into the pit, he stopped and hovered as a passage into the stone opened before him. He followed it to this spot.
Yesterday he began the Change without. Now to begin the Change within.
He hesitates. This is a step from which there is no return. This is a process that once begun cannot be reversed, cannot be halted. When it is complete he will have a new form, one he will wear into eternity.
He will be magnificent.
Still he hesitates. For the shape of his new form will not be of his own choosing. Those above—those puny, frightened creatures milling on the surface—will determine his countenance. He shall be an amalgam of all that they fear. For as their fear feeds him, so shall it shape him. His form shall be the common denominator of all that humanity loathes and dreads most, the personificati
on of all its nightmares. The deepest fears from the darkest recesses of the fetid primordial swamps of their hindbrains. Everything that causes the hairs at the back of the neck to rise, makes the flesh along the spine crawl, urges the bowels and bladder to empty. He shall be all of them.
Fear incarnate.
Rasalom’s body tilts until he is floating horizontally in the tight granite pocket. He spreads his legs and rams his feet against the stone wall. He screams as they fuse with the living rock, screams as all the fears, the angers, the hatreds, hostilities, violence, pain, and grief from the city surge into him. He stretches his arms and fuses his right fist and the stump of his left wrist to the stone, and screams again. A scream of ecstasy as new power surges through him, but a scream of agony as well. For now the Change within has begun.
He swells. His skin stretches, then splits along his arms and legs, tears from his genitals to his scalp. As he continues to swell, the skin sloughs off and falls to the floor of the stone pocket like a discarded wrapper.
As the night air caresses his raw flesh, Rasalom screams again with what remains of his mouth.
FRIDAY
In Profundis
WNYW-TV
—the sun’s behavior continues to baffle astronomers, physicists, and cosmologists. We’ve been informed that it rose at 5:46 this morning, late again, this time by almost nineteen minutes.
And from Central Park, startling news of a huge hole opening in the Sheep Meadow during the night. We have a camera crew on the scene and you’ll see live footage as soon as it is available …
Manhattan
Glaeken stood at the picture window and looked down on the hole. Flashing red lights lit the tardy dawn as police cars and fire trucks ringed the lower end of the park. A barricade had been set up around the entire Sheep Meadow to keep out the curious throngs. Television vans and camera trucks spewed miles of cable and aimed lights that lit the area to noon brightness. Dominating the center of the scene was the hole. It had grown to two hundred feet across and stopped.
He closed his eyes to shut out the sight of it—just for a moment. He swayed with fatigue. He ached for sleep, but when he lay down it spurned his bidding.
So tired. He’d thought he’d freed himself from this, escaped the burden of responsibility for this war. But it wouldn’t go away. Only when his successor was empowered would he truly be free.
Jack was the successor, the Heir. The Lady had known it, and Glaeken had no doubt of it. Even Rasalom knew.
Under the old rules—when the Ally was still present—the succession would have occurred automatically with Glaeken’s last breath. But now, with the Ally turned away, his death would accomplish nothing.
He needed the weapon.
He’d expected some difficulty in reassembling its components, but the task was proving to be more formidable than he’d imagined.
The weapon would empower Jack and pass the reins to him.
That was the hope: first the weapon, then the succession, then the battle. A battle that, from the looks of things, would be lost before it was begun. But he had to go through the motions, had to try.
Behind him he heard Bill hang up the phone and approach the window. Glaeken opened his eyes and rubbed a hand across his face. Had to appear calm and in control at all times. Couldn’t let them see the doubt, the dread, the desperation that nipped at his heels. How could he exhort them to maintain belief in themselves if he didn’t set the example?
“Finally got through to Nick,” Bill said, coming up beside him. “He’s on his way down to the park with a team from the university.”
“What for?”
“To find out what caused the hole.”
“I can save him the trip. Rasalom caused the hole.”
“That’s not going to do it for Nick.” He gazed down at the park. “I guess this is what you meant when you said his next move would be in the earth.”
Glaeken nodded. “And its placement is not random.”
“Really? Central Park has some significance for Rasalom?”
“Only so far as Central Park is located right outside my window.”
Going to rub my face in it, aren’t you, Rasalom?
“It doesn’t look real,” Bill said. “I feel like I’m in a movie looking at some sort of computer-generated effect.”
“It’s quite real, believe me.”
“I do. They’ve got close-ups on the TV, by the way. Want to take a look?”
“I’ve seen others like it close up before, although never one this big.”
“You have? When?”
“Long ago.” Ages.
“How deep is that thing?”
“Bottomless.”
Bill smiled. “No. Really.”
Apparently he’d misunderstood, so Glaeken spoke slowly and clearly.
“There is no bottom to that hole, Bill. It is quite literally bottomless.”
“But that’s impossible. It would have to go all the way through to China or whatever’s on the other end.”
“The other end doesn’t open on this world.”
“Come on. Where then?”
“Elsewhere.”
Glaeken watched the priest’s eyes flick back and forth between him and the hole.
“Elsewhere? Where’s elsewhere?”
“The place has no name. We call it the Otherness, but I don’t believe there’s any way to describe in human terms what the other end of that hole is like.”
“I believe I’ll change and go down there for a closer look.”
“No need to rush. The hole isn’t going anywhere. And it’s only the first.”
“You mean there’s going to be more?”
“Many. All over the world. But Rasalom has honored me by opening the first outside my front door.”
“I’ll see if I can hook up with Nick down there and find out what he knows.”
“Just be sure to be back before dark.”
Bill smiled. “Okay, Dad.”
“I’m quite serious.”
His smile faded. “Yeah. I guess you are. Okay. Back before dark.”
Glaeken watched Bill hurry to his room. He was fond of the man. He couldn’t ask for a better houseguest. Always willing to help around the apartment or with Magda when the nurse wasn’t around.
As if sensing her name within his thoughts, Magda called from the bedroom.
“Hello? Is anybody there? Have I been left alone to die?”
“Coming, dear.”
He took one final look at the hole, then headed down the hall.
He found Magda sitting up in her bed. She’d been losing weight and her eyes were starting to retreat into her skull. Her face was as lined as his, her hair as white. But her brown eyes were bright with anger.
“Who are you?” she said, switching to her native Hungarian tongue.
“I’m your husband, Magda.”
“No, you’re not!” She spat the words. “I wouldn’t marry such an old man like you! Why, you’re old enough to be my father! Where’s Glenn?”
“Right here. I’m Glenn.”
“No! Glenn’s young and strong with red hair!”
He took her hands in his. “Magda, it’s me. Glenn.”
Terror flashed across her face, then her features softened. She smiled.
“Oh, yes. Glenn. How could I have forgotten? Where have you been?”
“Right in the next room.”
Her expression hardened as her eyes narrowed.
“No you weren’t! You’ve been out seeing other women! Don’t deny it! You’re out with that nurse! Don’t think I don’t know what the two of you are up to when you think I’m asleep!”
Glaeken held her hands and let her ramble on. He wanted to cry. After two years he’d have thought he could have adapted to anything, but he couldn’t get used to Magda’s dementia. None of her ravings were true, yet Magda fully believed the delusions floating through the expanding vacuum of her mind, truly meant the hurtful things she said as she spoke
them. They never failed to cut him deeply.
Oh, Magda, my Magda, where have you gone?
Glaeken closed his eyes and recalled her as she had been when they’d met in 1941. Her soft, even features, her fresh pale skin, glossy chestnut hair, and wide dark eyes filled with love, tenderness, and intelligence. It was the love, tenderness, and intelligence he mourned for most now. Even after her physical beauty had faded, his love for her had not. For she had remained Magda the poet, Magda the singer, Magda the mandolin player, Magda the scholar who so loved art and music and literature. Her compendium of Romanian Gypsy music, Songs of the Rom, was still in print, still gracing the shelves of finer bookstores.
Three years ago she started to slip away, infiltrated and irreversibly replaced by this mad, incoherent stranger. Her mental status deteriorated first, but soon she became physically enfeebled as well. She could not get out of bed by herself now. That made caring for her easier in a way because she could no longer wander at night. In the early stages of her decline Glaeken had found her searching the street below, calling for their pet cat, dead since 1962. After that he’d had to deadbolt the apartment door and remove the knobs from the stove to prevent her from cooking “dinner” at two in the morning.
The old, buried Magda occasionally flickered back to life. She couldn’t remember what she had for breakfast—or if she’d even had breakfast—yet now and then she’d recall an incident in their life together from thirty or forty years ago as if it were yesterday. But instead of buoying Glaeken, the brief lapses in her dementia only deepened his despair.
It wasn’t fair.
Glaeken had known and loved so many women through the ages, yet each relationship had ended in bitterness. Each love had, in her own way, ended up hating him as she grew old while he stayed young. Finally he had found Magda, the one woman in his seemingly endless life that he’d be allowed to grow old with. And they’d had a glorious life, a love that could not be tainted even by the pain of these past few years.
The Complete Adversary Cycle: The Keep, the Tomb, the Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) Page 193