The Dark at the End rj-15

by F. Paul Wilson

  She drove past it and spotted a silver Lexus with MD plates, parked near the lagoon by what was either a garage or boathouse.

  Gotcha.

  Either pediatric surgery was a very lucrative specialty or Dr. Heinze had some rich friends or relatives.

  Or-hope-hope-hope-he was making a house call.

  Dawn kept moving, then made a quick left into the driveway of a house two lots west and across the street. She twisted in her seat and checked out the mansion. She had a clear view of the front door, the lagoon dock, and the Lexus from here. Perfect.

  Now… if she could only stay here.

  She checked out the house before her: a two-story saltbox clad in weathered cedar shakes. It looked empty.

  She left her car running and stepped to the front door where she rang the bell and waited. If someone answered, she’d ask if they knew where so-and-so lived.

  No answer, so she rang again.

  Still no answer.

  Cool.

  She tightened her coat around her against the buffeting wind off the bay-they kept talking about a big storm coming-and checked out the neighbors. Only half a dozen houses down here on the west end of the street, and they all looked deserted. The Lexus was the only car in sight.

  No surprise. Some of these were summer homes, some were year round. But if you could afford to live out here, you probably spent the winter months someplace warm. Like Key Biscayne or Naples, or the Keys.

  She returned to her car, pulled out, then backed in close to the garage so she was half hidden but still had a view. She turned off her engine-save that gas-and settled down to watch.

  Not ten minutes passed before she saw movement around the far side of the house.

  A boat was bobbing down the lagoon toward the dock, moving backward. A small white cabin cruiser, twenty-five feet long, with a couple of fishing rods poking up from the rear and a lone man at the helm. As it eased against the dock, the driver-captain? pilot?-hopped out and grabbed the lines. A big man, bundled up and wearing a slicker against the cold and wet. Something familiar about him…

  After he’d tied the lines, he went to a compartment by the transom and pulled out a string of four flat fish. He’d had his head down or turned away since he arrived, but now he raised it. He wore a satisfied grin on a face Dawn knew all too well.

  “Oh… my… God!” she said aloud.

  Her mouth went dry as her heart doubled its rate.

  Georges… Mr. Osala’s driver and general gofer.

  If he was here, and Dr. Heinze was here, that could only mean her baby was here too. Probably inside with that bitch Gilda. And maybe Mr. Osala as well.

  What should she do? What could she do?

  She fumbled for her phone. Call Weezy. No, call Jack. He’ll know what to do.

  4

  Hank stood at the window of his second-floor bedroom and thought about birds. A big, double-hung window. The room sported two of them. Thick, old-fashioned glass with faint ripples through it. But one large bird or a bunch of smaller, determined birds might break through it.

  He had birds on the brain because he’d had that dream again and it was worse than ever.

  He’d expected to dream about Szeto and his Eurotrash enforcers with bullets through their heads. Those three dead bodies tangled on the floor, all staring eyes and punctured foreheads and blood, so much blood… he couldn’t get the image out of his head.

  The death and blood didn’t bother him in the least-really, who gave a shit about Szeto and company? What did bother him was knowing that the guy he’d been looking for all these months had done it. Killed all three-single-handed. Hank was glad now that he’d never found him. Still couldn’t figure out how he’d got free. But the guy was back on the streets now, and he knew Hank had gone out to find some tools to mess him up, so it was a good chance he’d be coming for Hank.

  Bad enough, but then the new Kicker Man dream. Not completely new-it started like the others with the K-Man being attacked in the dark by birds or something like birds, unable to fight them off, and finally knocked down and repeatedly buzzed. But it hadn’t stopped there. The birds had left the Kicker Man laid out on the ground. As soon as they flew off, worms slid out of the ground and crawled all over the K-Man… eating him. They didn’t quit till they’d devoured his diamond-shaped head, leaving behind a decapitated stick figure.

  Hank didn’t need any gypsy to interpret that dream. The K-Man was Kickerdom, and Hank was its head. Someone wanted Hank’s head. And that someone could only be the guy known as Jack.

  Well, Hank Thompson’s head was staying right where it was, and the rest of Hank Thompson was staying right here. Neither that Jack guy nor anyone else was going to scare him off.

  Hank was going to take steps.

  5

  Jack helped the Lady step over the three-foot-high wall of rectangular slabs-they still reminded Jack of headstones-ringing the pyramid. The three of them stopped and stared at the structure.

  Odd glyphs had been carved in the outer surface of each megalith, and remained faintly visible. He could make out three from this angle:

  Eddie had also called it a giant stone teepee, and that wasn’t too far off. But it looked ancient, felt ancient… and alien.

  Everything was exactly as he remembered it. No sign of vandalism or evidence that anyone else had discovered it. The absence of litter confirmed that.

  Weezy must have been thinking along the same lines. “Nice to know that some secrets remain secret,” she said.

  The Lady approached the pyramid. She stopped at the opening between a pair of the megaliths and stuck her head through.

  “I believe Srem was right,” she said as Jack and Weezy came up behind her. “This does have a power of occultation.”

  “Great,” Jack said. “Then we won’t have to worry about anyone sneaking up on you.”

  She pulled her head back and turned to face them.

  “It might have had the power to hide me completely when it was whole.” She pointed to the broken megalith. “But it is not.”

  Weezy frowned. “But then-?”

  “It will, however, reduce awareness of me, and diffuse what seeps through. If you have a sensitivity to me, you will know that I exist, but you will not be able to pinpoint my location.”

  Jack grinned. “Perfect.”

  The Lady thrust her arm through the slit. “Let us waste no time then.”

  She turned sideways and squeezed through the opening, easing herself down to the sunken sandy floor within. She strode to the stone column, maybe a foot in diameter and four feet high, that stood in the exact center of the space, then turned to face them.

  “I will stay here.”

  Jack didn’t know what to say. He glanced at Weezy, close beside him, and she seemed at a loss for words too.

  “Go,” the Lady said, making a shooing motion. “You both have more important things to do than stand here and stare at me.”

  “Just… leave?” Weezy said.

  “Yes. Go.”

  “You’ll be all right?”

  “Perfectly fine.”

  “Won’t you be lonely?”

  “How can I be lonely when I have all of you-when I am all of you?”

  Good point.

  “Do you need-?”

  “I need you to go about your business.”

  Jack took Weezy’s arm and gently pulled her away.

  “You heard her, Weez.”

  “Yeah, but…” She came with him, but kept looking back over her shoulder. “Walking away and just leaving her there-with a storm coming, no less-seems so… wrong.”

  Jack looked back and saw the old woman standing alone in the cold within the confines of the megaliths. He knew how Weezy felt.

  “Yeah, it does, because we keep thinking of her as an old woman. But that’s simply the avatar she’s stuck with. She’s not an old woman. And she doesn’t feel cold or hot, rain and snow don’t bother her, she doesn’t eat, she doesn’t sleep, and she d
oesn’t feel lonely. Ever.”

  They made their way back to the Jeep and headed back to Johnson, driving in silence until they reached Old Town.

  “Do we have time to swing by our old places?”

  Jack nodded. “Tons of time.”

  Back over the bridge and then onto North Franklin up to Adams Street where Weezy used to live. He slowed as they passed and let her stare at her place.

  “Want me to stop?”

  She shook her head. “No. Seen enough.” She leaned back. “I don’t know why people have such nostalgia for their childhoods.”

  “Was yours so bad?”

  “I remember the grammar school years as being pretty good-at least I don’t remember anything bad. But high school…” She shook her head again. “As soon as I stopped being the Stepford child and started thinking for myself, it all went to hell.”

  “You went goth.”

  “I didn’t go anything.”

  He smiled. “Oh, right. Black shirts, black jeans, lots of eyeliner, Bauhaus, Siouxie… you were a disco queen.”

  “Okay, okay, I fit a type. But I didn’t go around thinking, ‘Look at me, I’m a goth.’ It was what I liked. And what my folks hated, unfortunately.”

  “Yeah, your dad…”

  “I still remember that disapproving look on his face every time he’d see me. Every time. I was on an emotional seesaw as it was, with my moods all over the place, and he made it ten times worse.”

  Jack remembered her ups and downs, wild swings sometimes.

  She sighed. “Even after the doctors came up with a drug cocktail to even me out-well, I never evened out, but the amplitude of the swings lessened. Even so, high school was hell.”

  Not for Jack. He remembered having a pretty good time. But he wasn’t about to say that.

  She reached over and rubbed his shoulder. “Except for you, Jack. You were my rock. You never rejected me, even at my nuttiest.”

  Jack was wondering what he could say that wouldn’t sound lame. The ringing of his cell phone saved him.

  “I’m calling from the Easy Peasy,” said a male voice. “You left a message about a charter?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for calling back. First thing: you have a depth finder?”

  A snort. “Course I do.”

  “Can you take me out to the Hudson Canyon where it’s a mile deep?”

  “Yeah.” He stretched the word. “We are talking fishing here, right?”

  “No. Scientific experiment.”

  Weezy gave him a look and he shrugged. Couldn’t very well tell the guy he was dumping a sword overboard.

  “How many people?”

  “Two. Just me and my assistant.”

  Another Weezy look.

  He pressed the mute button. “Eddie?”

  She nodded.

  “ Easy Peasy ’s built to hold up to twenty. Kind of expensive for just two people.”

  “Money’s no object. I’ve got oceanography grants.”

  Weezy rolled her eyes and put a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.

  “Whatever. When do you want to go?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t you listen to the news? Heavy weather coming. Big nor’easter heading up the coast. Ten-foot swells out there already.”

  Jack hadn’t been paying much attention to the weather. He’d heard some mention of snow.

  “Tomorrow, then?”

  The master of the Easy Peasy couldn’t hide his exasperation with this landlubber. “It hits tomorrow. I’ll call you next week.”

  Jack didn’t want to wait that long.

  “I’ll pay extra.”

  “Look, you can’t pay me enough to take my boat out into what’s coming. Talk to you next week.”

  He hung up.

  “Crap,” Jack said. He told Weezy about the nor’easter.

  “It’s been all over the news,” she said. “Where’ve you been?”

  Abducted… taped to a chair… threatened with torture… shooting people…

  “Preoccupied, I guess. Maybe one of the other boats-”

  “Maybe the Andrea Gail will take you. Look, that katana’s been in your closet for months. It can stay there a few more days. No sense in risking your life just to-”

  Now Weezy’s phone rang. She dug it out of her pocket.

  “Hello?” she said. “Oh, hi. Yeah, he’s right here. What-?” She frowned and handed Jack the phone. “It’s Dawn. She sounds a little worked up. Says she’s got to talk to you.”

  6

  “Nothing?” Dawn said, her voice rising in pitch and volume. “We do nothing?”

  Jack noticed a couple of people in the deli/sandwich shop glancing their way and made a calming gesture.

  “Let’s keep this between just the three of us, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said at a lower volume. “But my baby’s in there. I can totally feel it.”

  Jack watched her. Dawn looked more animated than he’d ever seen her. After her call, he and Weezy had driven directly from Jersey to Long Island by way of the Verrazano and Brooklyn. They’d stayed in touch much of the time, with only a few cell dead spots along the way. When Dawn had called to say Dr. Heinze was leaving the beach house, Jack had told her to follow him as far as the nearest town and find someplace like a coffee shop where she could wait for them. She’d resisted at first, preferring to stay where she was, but had finally agreed.

  She’d found a Citarella with a view of a windmill, and waited. The three of them occupied a rear table, with Jack facing the two women.

  Jack decided she looked more than animated. She looked wired. Not the state of someone who’d be easy to convince that slow and steady was going to win this race. So he’d have to let her convince herself.

  He said, “I agree a hundred percent: Everything points to your baby being in that house. What do you think we should do?”

  She shrugged as if the answer was too obvious. “Go in and get him.”

  “Really? How many people are inside?”

  From her spot beside Dawn, Weezy gave him an almost imperceptible nod of approval.

  “Well, I know Georges is there, and I assume Mr. Osala and… Gilda.”

  Lots of poison in that last name. From what Jack had gathered, Osala’s housekeeper had given Dawn a pretty hard time while she was a not-so-voluntary guest at the Fifth Avenue digs.

  “Can’t assume. You do a home invasion, you’d damn well better know what you’re getting into.”

  She lowered her voice further. “Well, you have a gun-I’ve seen it. You could use it to make them give us the baby.”

  “They could have guns too, and things could get ugly, endangering us and your baby. But let’s say they’re unarmed. What if they refuse to give up the baby? Who do I shoot?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Gilda.”

  “Really? Shoot her dead or just wound her?”

  She looked away. “All right… I guess not.”

  “Okay. But let’s assume we do cow them and they hand over your baby. Where do you take him? They know where you live. Reprisals could follow. Not only that, you signed him away for adoption. Maybe Mr. Osala adopted him. You have no legal right to that baby, so they could send the police after you-and Weezy and me, as well-for kidnapping.”

  She leaned back, looking defeated. “Okay, okay, okay, but I can’t believe there isn’t something we can do.”

  Weezy put an arm around her shoulders. “We talked about this on the way here and we think we’ve come up with a plan.”

  He was glad she’d sat next to Dawn; that way it didn’t seem like the two adults against her. Jack had to keep reminding himself that she was only nineteen.

  “Right,” Jack said. “A full frontal assault is a last resort. We need to determine exactly what we’re dealing with and find a way to spirit your baby out of there without being seen. But before we try that, we need to set up a way for you to drop out of sight after
ward. You’ll be their prime suspect, but if they can’t find you…”

  Jack had no idea if he could pull this off. Really… how do you hide a woman who has a baby with a tentacle growing out of each armpit? But he was going to try his damnedest.

  The only way he could see even a glimmer of hope of success was to take out Rasalom first. Do that and Georges and Gilda would lose their center, their purpose for staying with the baby. They might be glad to have someone take the child off their hands. But even if they weren’t, grabbing the baby would be much easier with their Mr. Osala out of the picture. In the aftermath of his death, Jack could very likely swoop in and snatch the child from right under their noses.

  A plan began to form…

  “First thing we need is an observation post. You say you found a house that’s a good vantage point?”

  Dawn nodded. “But I don’t see how we can camp out there very long without someone noticing.”

  Jack agreed. “It has a garage?”

  Another nod.

  “Okay, we need to find out who owns it and-”

  “It has an oar over the door carved with ‘The O’Donnell’s’-that’s with an apostrophe s. ”

  “Perfect. Time to learn all about the O’Donnells.”

  7

  It took longer than expected. Not because the O’Donnells were particularly secretive, but because the Internet still wasn’t up to snuff after the crash.

  First thing after leaving the coffee shop, the three of them drove to the county seat and looked up the lot and block number of the property jointly owned by Francis and Marie O’Donnell who were listed as residents of Riviera Beach, Florida. From there to the local library where they used a computer to track the couple. Bits and pieces from multiple sites sketched out the details Jack needed. Francis: seventy-six and a former stockbroker who retired from Bear Stearns well before the meltdown. Marie: seventy-four and a former high school teacher.