The Dark at the End rj-15

by F. Paul Wilson

  Jack made the assumption that, barring a family emergency, a couple in their midseventies with a primary residence in South Florida would keep their distance from the bitter cold of Long Island in March.

  So he decided to move in.

  He left Weezy and Dawn in the Hamptons and made the long trip to his apartment to retrieve his break-in kit and a few other goodies.

  Darkness had fallen by the time he returned. Weezy dropped him off at the end of the street and he walked the rest of the way. He had a bad moment when he reached the place and found lights on in the front room and an upstairs window. But a few cautious peeks inside showed no signs of life: he spotted a timer in the socket feeding the light in the front window. No doubt the same story upstairs. A good policy for the owner: The place looked occupied to anyone driving by.

  He used a bump key to enter the house through the rear door into the utility room. The place felt delightfully warm to Jack after the frigid wind off the bay, but still a little cool for the comfort of a couple of septuagenarians. A good sign, but he needed to be absolutely sure the place was empty. He hurried through the first floor, then through the bedrooms upstairs. All empty.

  Back on the first floor, he used quick flashes of his penlight to find a thermostat. They’d left it set on fifty-five. He upped that ten degrees and heard a furnace go on. He tried a faucet. No water. Took him a few minutes to find the shut-off valve; he turned it back on.

  He called Weezy and gave her the all-clear, then went out by the garage-a one-car garage, unfortunately. But they’d found a spot in the trees down by the highway, not a hundred yards from the O’Donnells’ back door, to stash the SUV. A padlock on the simple gate latch held the garage’s old-fashioned double doors closed. He shimmed it open and waited.

  A few minutes later a car appeared with its headlights out. Jack swung the garage doors open and held them until Dawn’s Volvo was inside, then closed up and replaced the padlock without securing it. Weezy and Dawn emerged from the garage’s rear door with the bare-necessities groceries they’d picked up in Amagansett. Weezy had her backpack with her precious Compendium slung over her shoulder.

  “Okay,” he said as they unpacked the bags in the kitchen. “We’ve got heat, water, and power.”

  The backwash of light from the front room provided enough illumination to allow them to see what they were doing.

  “All the comforts of home,” Weezy said.

  “Not quite. We need to stay out of the front room while the light is on. Same for the lighted room upstairs. The owners may have hired some security people to drive by now and then, or they may have some sort of neighborhood watch. We don’t want to risk someone spotting movement in a supposedly empty house.”

  The women nodded.

  “I’ll find a blanket to drape over the bathroom window, so we can at least put that light on when we need it, but otherwise no lights.”

  Dawn looked at him. “Sounds like you think we’re going to be here a long time.”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  She looked from Jack to Weezy. “I’ve got a feeling there’s another agenda here.”

  No dummy, this girl.

  Weezy said, “I want you to get your baby back. But…”

  Dawn turned to Jack. “But what?”

  “Mister Osala is important too,” he said.

  She frowned. “Why?”

  Okay. Time to lay out as much as he could for her. He gestured to the kitchen table.

  “Maybe we should sit down and discuss this.”

  They pulled out chairs and seated themselves in the near dark.

  Jack said, “Where do I begin, Weez?”

  She cleared her throat. “I think we should keep this on as mundane a level as possible.”

  Explain it without mentioning the Otherness and the Ally? Not easy, but it would keep them from looking like head cases.

  “Worth a try.”

  She leaned toward Dawn. “There’s a war going on. It’s being fought behind the scenes. Mister Osala is a very big player in that war. He’s not a detective, your mother never hired him to protect you-in fact, your mother never met or even heard of him. Everything he told you is a lie.”

  “Then why-?”

  “He leads a cult. You saw their symbol on the back of your obstetrician’s watch. They think they can take over the world.”

  Dawn slapped her hands on the table. “Oh, I don’t believe this!”

  Jack saw where Weezy was going.

  “ You don’t have to believe it,” he said. “What’s important to know is that Osala believes it. And he believes your baby is the key to that takeover.”

  Jack didn’t know if that was true-he had no idea what Rasalom had planned for the baby-but it might be. And even if he was wrong, it sounded good. Whatever it took to widen Dawn’s focus from just her baby to a bigger picture.

  “But that’s crazy!”

  Weezy said, “No argument. But crazy or not, the baby is why he took you in during your pregnancy and dumped you as soon as you delivered. That’s why he spirited the baby away.”

  “And that,” Jack said, tapping the table, “is why he’s got to figure into what we do here.”

  “But I just want my baby back.”

  Jack hit her with an angle he thought would lock her in.

  “Do you want to keep your baby once you find him?”

  “Of course!”

  “Well, you can depend on Osala to do his damnedest to get him back. So unless we deal with Osala here and now, you and your baby could spend the rest of your lives on the run.”

  Dawn leaned forward. “What do you mean by ‘deal’ with him?”

  “Leave that to me.”

  A pause, then, “You’re a little scary, you know that?”

  “Scarier than the guy who locked you away in his apartment for months on end and then stole your baby?”

  Another pause. “Score one for you. But how does this affect what we’re doing here?”

  “Okay,” Jack said. “We’re working with only two facts right now: Osala’s driver is over there, and the pediatric surgeon present during your labor has paid a visit. Everything else is assumption. We can assume your baby is there but we need to establish that as a fact. And even if we do, we can’t move until we can establish beyond a doubt that Osala is there.”

  “But why?”

  Jack thought he’d made that obvious but Dawn’s tunnel vision persisted.

  “So that when you take the baby and leave, I can make sure no one hounds your trail.”

  Weezy rested her hand atop Dawn’s. “Larger issues than you and your baby are at stake here, Dawn. You don’t need to know the details, but you were right: We have another agenda. But it dovetails perfectly with yours. We’ll help you get and keep your baby, but you’ve got to promise us you’ll play it Jack’s way and let him decide the timing. That way we’ll all walk away with what we came for.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Of course you have a choice,” Jack told her. “But if you do something rash, we could all come away empty-handed.”

  “Rash?” She sounded offended. “Like what?”

  “Like going over there and peeking in the windows to see if you can spot the baby.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “On target?” Jack said.

  She sighed and he saw her nod in the dim light. “Yeah.”

  He’d figured if she hadn’t already thought of that, it wouldn’t be long before she did. Might as well get it on the table.

  “Just promise me, Dawn, that the only window you’ll peek through is one of those upstairs, okay?”

  A reluctant tone: “Okay. But somebody needs to look in that house.”

  “I agree. And that would be me. Dark is the best time. In fact, I’ll take a look right now.”

  8

  The bayfront mansion occupied an oversize lot-at least triple, maybe quadruple. The excess land on either side had been left untended and filled
with a tangle of wild bayberry. The leaves had dropped in the fall and the bare branches scratched and tugged at Jack as he made his way toward the west side of the house.

  Before approaching the mansion, he’d done a quick reconnoiter of the neighborhood. Half a dozen houses occupied this end of the street. He already knew about the mansion and the O’Donnell house, so he checked out the others. All four were empty. Still had to be careful, though. Never knew who was going to drive by.

  When he reached the yard proper, he encountered an expanse of three-quarter-inch gravel that substituted for grass out here.

  Good thing it was March instead of summer. No way to cross those stones in silence. If the windows were open, he’d be busted. But even though they were all shut tight against the cold, he moved as carefully and silently as he could.

  The icy wind off the bay cut at him as he peeked through a lighted side window that looked in on the house’s great room. Probably should have been called a huge room. It had a high, raftered ceiling and took up the entire waterfront side of the first floor. An unbroken line of sliding-glass doors faced the water; the stained plank walls were bedizened with all the standard beach house paraphernalia: framed seascapes, sailboat-racing pennants, mounted fish, and an assortment of nets and buoys suspended among the rafters.

  Two people-a heavyset gray-haired woman on the sofa and a big guy in an easy chair-watched an appropriately large flat-screen TV.

  And off to the side… a white bassinet.

  Isn’t this cozy. Just a down-homey, Norman Rockwelly domestic scene.

  Okay, the guy had to be Georges, and the woman fit Dawn’s description of Gilda, the housekeeper. The baby himself wasn’t visible and no tentacles coiled in the air above the bassinet. But after Dr. Heinze’s visit today, the mere presence of the bassinet was enough.

  Only one thing missing: the Master of the house. Where was-?

  He stiffened at the sound of a high-pitched screech from within. Not human, and not like any animal he’d ever heard. Something between, that tickled the hairs on the back of his neck.

  He saw Georges jump in his chair-the screech had to have been much louder in there-but he didn’t rise. He looked like he’d heard it before. The woman, however, bounced her thick body off the couch and hurried in Jack’s direction. Another screech sounded as she approached and he saw her press her hands over her ears. He ducked back as she neared. When he peeked back in, Georges was still in his chair, eyes on the screen, and Gilda was nowhere in sight.

  That noise… had to be Dawn’s baby. But what kind of baby had a cry like that? Jack had spent some time with Gia down in the St. Vincent’s pediatric AIDS ward before the hospital shut down. He’d heard a lot of distressed babies but never one that sounded like that.

  The sound didn’t repeat. Jack watched until Gilda reappeared from a side room. He’d hoped to see her carrying a baby but she was empty-handed. She returned to the sofa where she and Georges had a brief conversation before fixing their gazes on the screen again.

  Lowering to a crouch and stepping carefully, he moved around to the south side to what he estimated would be the window into the room she’d visited. He couldn’t stay here long because it faced the street where he was exposed to anyone driving past, but he felt compelled to peek. The streetlight behind him cast a skewed quadrangle of light across the floor within, ending at the legs of a crib. He saw the shadow of his head moving within the light, but the crib lay beyond it, sheathed in darkness.

  He spotted two bright points behind its railing-not glowing, merely reflecting the light from the window. Little eyes? But they seemed too high in the crib to belong to the baby. He’d have to be standing upright for them to be at that level. Jack’s knowledge about babies was on a par with his grasp of quantum mechanics, but he was pretty damn sure infants couldn’t stand at only two weeks of age.

  But then again, this was no ordinary baby. This little guy was full of oDNA, damn near a q’qr. Maybe…

  No way. But damn, they looked like eyes, and they seemed trained on him… but they didn’t blink.

  He ducked away for fear of triggering another screech.

  He shook off a chill. The previous Norman Rockwelly scene had taken an Addams Family turn.

  He returned to the great-room window and the really important question: Where was Rasalom?

  What did he do in his downtime, when he wasn’t plotting the end of the world? Hang upside down from a rafter? Jack couldn’t help a glance up to check among the junk up there.

  The rest of the house was dark, so he had to assume that Rasalom was either sleeping or absent. Jack couldn’t buy sleeping, so he’d have to go with his being somewhere else.

  But where? When was he coming back? Did he ever visit?

  The presence of his driver was a good indication that he did. But hell, he could be a couple of continents away on some extended jaunt. If so, how long could Jack keep Dawn reined in?

  Dawn… she worried him. She was the weak link here. He wished he could send her back to the city and tell her to wait while he took care of everything. But that would never fly.

  That infant seat in the back of her car spoke volumes: She wasn’t leaving here until she had a baby in it.

  The question now was how much to tell her? Mention the bassinet? Would that send her flying across the street?

  He needed more info on Rasalom’s whereabouts and knew of only one place to get it.

  9

  “I’m glad you called,” Ernst said when he recognized Jack’s voice. He meant it. “I have uncovered some information and didn’t know how to contact you.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I proceeded in a circumspect manner, pretending to look for one thing while really looking for another.”

  “And?”

  Impatience was already creeping into Jack’s tone. Well, too bad. Ernst’s information could not be fully appreciated without the details of the quest.

  He glanced around his apartment. Hard to believe that only twenty-four hours ago Jack had invaded his home and threatened him. In the ensuing hours Ernst had become responsible for the deaths of three of his brothers in the Order and had joined forces with Jack against the One. An almost unthinkable turnaround in any length of time, but a day?

  All the One’s doing, of course. He had deserted Ernst, not the other way around.

  “Do you know the name of the One’s housekeeper?”

  “Gilda.”

  Ernst felt his eyebrows lift. Odd that Jack would know. Only the very upper echelons of the Order were aware of that. Well, here was something he would not know…

  “Are you aware of her last name?”

  “Not a clue.”

  That was a relief, in a way.

  “The Order has supplied logistical support and personnel to the One for millennia. His current driver/assistant-”

  “Georges.”

  “Yes… correct.”

  Did Jack have a source high up in the Order? His friend Edward Connell would be privy to none of this. Who then?

  “Georges is a member of the Order. When the One needed a female to deal with a certain matter-”

  “That matter being Dawn Pickering, right? Does this train have a caboose?”

  Of course-the pregnant Pickering girl had lived in the One’s house and was no doubt in touch with Jack now. She was the source.

  He felt better.

  “Since the Order does not admit female members, a relative of one of the brothers was recruited for the housekeeper position. Gilda’s son’s name was Kristof… Kristof Szeto.”

  “Ah. Like mother, like son, I gather. But so what?”

  “Well, I could not very well draw attention to myself by going to the High Council and inquiring directly as to the One’s whereabouts. Instead I asked about Kristof Szeto’s mother so that I might offer my condolences, seeing as how her son and I had such a close working relationship.”

  “Pretty close dying relationship too.”

&nbs
p; “Yes, well, be that as it may, I learned her location but I was instructed not to approach her. She’s still being used by the One and has not been informed of her son’s demise because it might distract her from her duties.”

  A short, bitter laugh. “You guys are all heart.”

  “Never mind that. She will be told at a later date. The important thing is that locating her is the same as locating the One.”

  “Not necessarily. I’ve been to the Nuckateague place- she’s there, but he’s not.”

  The words shocked Ernst.

  “You know about Nuckateague? How can you possibly-?”

  “Vee haff vays.”

  If that was supposed to be a German accent, it was terrible.

  Ernst felt unaccountably crushed. He thought he’d been quite clever in ferreting out the location without allowing the slightest hint of what he was really looking for. And here Jack had found it without him.

  “So if he’s not at the house,” Jack said, “where is he?”

  Ernst wanted to say, You mean there is something you do not already know?

  “I do not know.”

  “Then what good-?”

  “But I know where he will be.”

  “Where?”

  “JFK Airport at six P.M. tomorrow evening. Georges is scheduled to pick him up then and drive him to the Nuckateague house.”

  During the ensuing silence Ernst thought of how fortuitous it was that the High Council required Georges and Gilda to log in regarding their duties. Gilda was apparently taking care of the Pickering baby now, while Georges had what could only be described as a cushy assignment-few duties in luxurious surroundings. With the One away-no one knew where-he quite literally had nothing to do.

  “Six o’clock tomorrow night,” Jack said. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure that is what Georges told the Council. Whether or not it will change, I have no idea.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  And then he was gone. Ernst laid his phone on the table.

  Thanks…

  No… thank you… if you succeed.

  Would Jack make his move tomorrow? He seemed impatient to have this done with, but he also seemed very cautious… a careful planner.