Nightworld ac-6

by F. Paul Wilson

  Hank was so different from Jim. Her first husband had been a writer, living day to day, doing things on impulse, earning hangovers. Spontaneity and intemperance were not part of Hank's repertoire.

  And yet there was much to be said for staid and stable. Her marriage to Hank might lack the heat and passion of her relationship with Jim, but it did have warmth and trust and companionship, and she needed those right now.

  "I can't put it off," Carol said. "It's got to be this morning. There are people there he wants me to meet, and I want you to meet him and the others."

  He looked at her. "You're determined to go, aren't you."

  "Hank, I've got to."

  "Well, I'm certainly not letting you travel across town alone today. So I guess we'll be paying a visit on Mr…"

  "Veilleur. But he likes to be called Glaeken. And Bill Ryan will be there, so it won't be as if you won't know anybody."

  "He's involved in this too? How long have you been meeting this Veilleur or Glaeken fellow? And why does it all have to be so mysterious? Why can't you tell me more about it?"

  "I'm going to tell you all about it. I—I haven't told you everything about my past and I think it's high time you knew."

  Hank stepped in front of her and gently slipped his arms around her.

  "You don't have to worry about me. Nothing you can say will change how I feel about you."

  "I hope so." I hope you can handle what's coming.

  "But why can't you tell me first?"

  "Because I want you to have the big picture first before I tell you my part in it. Glaeken knows more about it and can explain it better than I can." He was there when it all started. "He knows who's behind those things that came out of the Central Park hole last night."

  Hank took a half step back from her.

  "He does? Who?"

  Carol bit her lip, wondering how much to say. Well, why not just blow the door off its hinges? Give him his first look into her locked room. Nothing would stay hidden long after that.

  "My son."

  Jack wasn't sure how long he'd been standing at the window, mesmerized by all the furious activity round the hole in the sheep Meadow, when the doorbell rang. He glanced down the hall where Glaeken had gone but there was no sign of him.

  Well, he'd said to answer the door, so that was what he'd do. Obviously Glaeken was expecting company.

  Jack opened the door and found the Odd Couple standing in the hall. A graying priest and a funny-looking younger guy with unfocused eyes, a stitched lip, and a dazed look on his puss. And was that drool in the corner of his mouth?

  "Who are you?" the priest said. Obviously he'd expected someone else to answer the door.

  "That's not what people usually say when they're on that side of the door," Jack told him.

  "I live here," the priest said with a touch of irritation.

  Jack wasn't going to argue with the man. He stepped out of the way.

  "If you say so."

  Jack checked out the priest as he passed. He was taller than Jack, maybe a dozen or so years older, but he looked fit. His face was battered and haggard and his blue eyes had a haunted look, the look of a guy who'd seen too much of a bad thing.

  The priest led his shell-shocked companion into the living room and sat him on the sofa. He almost had to bend the guy's knees to get him to sit. Then he turned to Jack.

  "Where's Glae—I mean, Mr. Veilleur?"

  "He asked me to call him Glaeken, and he's back with his wife. My name's Jack, by the way."

  "Oh, yes. I was supposed to meet you yesterday." He thrust out his hand. "Bill Ryan."

  Jack shook his hand. "You the priest?"

  "Used to be. I didn't catch your last name."

  "Jack'll do." To steer the talk away from names, he pointed to the guy on the sofa, and yeah, that was drool on his chin. "What happened to him?"

  "That's Dr. Nick Quinn. He's one of the scientists who went down into the hole yesterday. He's the one who survived."

  Jack stared at Nick Quinn with new respect. "I saw what came out of there last night…"

  Ryan put his hand on Quinn's shoulder. "I'm afraid Nick saw something much worse than those things."

  "Yeah," Jack said, watching the poor bastard stare blindly into space. Went down a rocket scientist, came back a geranium. "I guess he did. Where'd you come from this morning?"

  "Washington Heights."

  "How do things look up there?"

  "Not too bad. Mostly you'd never know anything happened until you get to Harlem. And even there, you could convince yourself they had nothing more than a bad storm last night. But from the Nineties down it looks like there was a riot or something. And around here…" He shook his head in dismay. "There's still blood on the pavement."

  Jack nodded. "It was worse earlier when I walked through from the East Side."

  His gut squirmed at the memory of that walk. He hadn't slept much last night. He'd spent most of the time standing anxious guard over Gia and Vicky and watching the tube for word from Central Park. There were news specials all night, but no visuals. Camera teams sent to the area were never heard from again. Shortly after sunrise he'd ventured out into the streets. Sutton Square was quiet, and early morning traffic was rolling uptown and down on Sutton Place as usual. No flying monsters anywhere about, so he'd jogged up the incline toward midtown.

  Between Madison and Park he came upon police barricades. He slipped past and continued west. Fifty-ninth Street became a nightmare. Deflated, sunken-cheeked, desiccated corpses littered the pavements, body parts were everywhere—a limbless, headless torso on the sidewalk, a leg in a gutter, a gnawed finger atop a mailbox. The closer he got to the Park, the thicker the carnage.

  Central Park South was the worst yet—dead people, dead horses still harnessed to their hansom cabs, overturned cars, a taxi half way through the front windows of Mickey Mantle's. Every emergency vehicle and meat wagon in the city seemed to have converged on the area to remove the bodies.

  Live people were about, too. All on their way out. The cops weren't allowing cabs or civilian vehicles into the area, so the surviving members of the mink coat and tennis bracelet set were lugging their own suitcases out of the Plaza, the Park Lane, the St. Moritz, the Barbizon-Plaza and lugging them down the avenues to where they could get a ride to the nearest airport.

  Jack had picked his way through the area and hurried home to find the old guy's phone number. Then he'd come here.

  The intercom buzzed then and Ryan answered it. He seemed pretty much at home here. The doorman said that a Mrs. Nash had arrived. Ryan looked at Jack questioningly.

  "It's okay," Jack said. "The old boy said she'd be coming."

  Ryan said to send her up, then turned and looked back toward the bedrooms.

  "Wonder what changed her mind?" he said to no one in particular. Then he shrugged and led Quinn to the kitchen. "I'm going to fix Nick something to eat. Want anything?"

  "No, thanks."

  Actually, Jack was hungry but too edgy, too unsettled to eat. Maybe later, at Julio's, over a pint of Courage. A gallon of Courage.

  The doorbell rang. He opened it. The Addams family was outside.

  At least they reminded him of the Addams family. There was a slinky brunette in a dark dress, a blond kid, and an Oriental Lurch. Only the guy in the wheelchair spoiled the picture.

  "Is he here?" said the kid, his blue eyes wide and bright. He poked his head through the doorway and looked up and down the hall. "He's here! I know he's here!"

  "Please, Jeffy," the woman said, placing a hand on his shoulder. She looked at Jack. "I'm Sylvia Nash."

  Jack liked her voice. You could fall in love with that voice. But he was already in love.

  "Hi," Jack said, stepping back and making way. "He's expecting you."

  "Where's Mr. Veilleur?" said the guy in the wheelchair.

  Jack pointed toward the living room.

  "He's around. Come on in. Have a seat." Jack wanted to bite his tongue on
that one. The guy already had a seat. "I'll tell him you're here."

  Jack stood back and watched them as they all trooped toward the living room—all except the big Oriental whose eyes never stopped moving. He stayed with the group as far as the end of the hall but halted at the threshold of the bigger room. He gave the living room the once-over, then stepped to the side and stood with his back against the wall, his big hands folded in front of him. The drawstring of a plastic Lord & Taylor's bag hung from one of his fingers. Out on the street he might have passed as a tourist who'd been shopping, but Jack had spied the billy club handle protruding from the bag.

  Jack admired the way he moved—smooth, silent, graceful for a guy his size. Everything about him said he'd been trained for hand-to-hand combat and security. As he studied the big guy, he realized the big guy was studying him.

  Jack wandered over to where he stood. He put out his hand.

  "My name's Jack."

  The big guy bobbed a quick bow and gave Jack's hand a brief shake.

  "Ba," he said in a deep voice.

  While Jack tried to figure if that was a personal assessment or a name, he noticed that the big guy's eyes didn't stray from the living room for more than a heartbeat.

  "It's safe here," Jack said. "You can relax."

  Another bob from Ba and a fleeting, yellow-toothed smile. "Yes. I see. Thank you so very much."

  Jack noted with approval that Ba did not relax one bit.

  Bill Ryan came in from the kitchen then and greeted the newcomers. He waved Jack in and introduced him to Sylvia Nash, Dr. Alan Bulmer, and the boy, Jeffy. The kid seemed hyper. When Ryan went to get Glaeken, Jack wandered back to Ba.

  "Where'd you train?"

  "In my homeland—Viet Nam."

  Jack wondered if he'd been a Cong.

  "Army?"

  His dark eyes never left the living room. "Special Forces."

  Knew it!

  "What's in the bag beside the billy?"

  Ba glanced at him, his eyes searching his face for a moment, then he handed the bag to Jack.

  Jack took it and loosened the drawstrings. From its weight he guessed there wasn't much more than the billy inside but he checked anyway. He pulled out the club and stared dumbfounded at the hundreds of tiny, gleaming, glass-like teeth protruding from the final ten inches of its business end.

  "Good Lord," he whispered. "These are teeth from those—" What had Glaeken called them? "—chew wasps."

  Ba said nothing.

  Jack gave the club a few short test swings. He'd seen what those little teeth could do. A billy club studded with them made one hell of a weapon.

  "How many did you kill?"

  "A few," Ba said.

  "How about the glob things? Get any of those?"

  Ba shook his head.

  "Watch out for them," Jack said. He lifted his partially eaten-away sneaker for Ba to see. "The glop in their bellies does this to rubber. It's even worse on skin."

  Ba's eyes flicked to Jack's bandaged arm, then away.

  Jack slipped the club back into the sack and held it out to him.

  "Think you could make me one of those?"

  Ba pushed the sack toward Jack. "You may have this."

  Reflexively, Jack began to refuse. He didn't accept gifts from strangers. He didn't like to be indebted to anyone, especially someone he'd just met. But he caught himself. They'd met only a few moments ago, had spoken only a few words—Ba hardly any at all—yet he sensed a kinship with the other man. Something like this had happened only a few times in his life. A good feeling. Ba must have sensed it too. The big Oriental was making a gesture. Jack could not refuse.

  "What about you? Won't you be needing it?"

  "I will make myself another. Many, many teeth where I live."

  "All right. I accept." Jack hefted the bag and tucked it under his arm. "Thank you, Ba. I have a feeling this might come in very handy."

  Ba nodded silently and watched the living room.

  Alan glanced over at where Ba was standing with the dark-haired, quick-eyed man who had been introduced simply as Jack. Something going on between those two, communication on a level he was not privy to. Odd…Ba related to almost no one outside the household.

  Alan hauled his attention away from the pair and directed it toward Sylvia and Jeffy.

  "He's here, isn't he, Mommy?" Jeffy was saying. He was bouncing on the seat cushion, his head swiveling this way and that. "Isn't he?"

  "Yes," Sylvia said patiently. "That's what we were told."

  "I bet he's in one of those rooms back there," he said. "Can I go back and see if he's—"

  "Jeffy, please sit still," Sylvia said. "It's very bad manners to go wandering around someone's house."

  "But I want to see him!"

  She put an arm around the boy's shoulders and hugged him against her.

  "I know you do, sweetie. So do I. That's why I'm here."

  Poor Sylvia. She'd been having such a hard time with Jeffy since Veilleur had shown up two days ago. And now that he was here in the old man's home, the boy was like an overwound spring.

  Alan could understand it. He too felt wired. Maybe it was the stress of last night, maybe it was all the coffee he'd poured down his throat this morning. But he had a feeling they were just a small part of it.

  Veilleur was the major factor. For no good reason, something within Alan responded positively—no, enthusiastically—to the man. It had to have something to do with the months Alan had played host to the Dat-tay-vao. After reducing him to a comatose vegetable, the power—entity, elemental force, whatever it was—had deserted him. But it must have left some sort of residue within, whether clinging to his peritoneum, coating his meninges, or riding the neural currents along his axons, he couldn't say. All he knew was that he was drawn to this old man, trusted him; he still remembered the warm glow he'd felt at first sight of him.

  And if that's how I feel, what must Jeffy feel?

  For Alan had no doubt that the Dat-tay-vao had chosen Jeffy as its new residence.

  He saw the priest, Father Ryan, return from the rear of the apartment. Mr. Veilleur followed him, wiping his hands on a towel as he walked in. And Alan felt that warmth again, glowing at his center, seeping throughout his torso and into his limbs.

  And Jeffy…Jeffy was on his feet. He ran to the old man and clasped his leg in a bear hug. Veilleur stopped and smiled down at him as he smoothed the boy's hair.

  "Hello, Jeffy. It's good to see you again."

  The boy said nothing, merely looked up at Veilleur with glowing eyes.

  Alan glanced over at the sofa where Sylvia, alone now, sat with a rigid spine and a tight, tense expression, chewing her lower lip as she watched the scene. Her eyes flashed with hurt—and anger. Alan knew the core of anger that coiled within Sylvia like a living thing. It had been quiescent in the past few months, but he vividly remembered how it used to bare its fangs and strike out at the unwary. He sensed it waking and stirring within her now.

  His heart went out to her. She had taken Jeffy in when he'd been abandoned at age three by unknown parents who had been defeated by his autism. She had slaved over him with psychotherapy, physiotherapy, nutritional therapy, occupational therapy, butting her head and heart against the unyielding barricades of his autism without ever once entertaining the thought of giving up. And then, a miracle: the Dat-tay-vao smashed through his autistic shell and released the child trapped within. Sylvia at last had the little boy she had been seeking.

  But now all that little boy seemed to care about was the mysterious old man who had appeared on her doorstep just two days ago.

  Alan felt her hurt as if it were his own. He wanted to go to her side and put an arm around her to let her know he understood and was with her all the way, but he couldn't reach her with his hand and his wheelchair couldn't squeeze by the coffee table to get to where she was and these damn legs wouldn't carry him the lousy half-dozen feet to her side.

  His legs. They infuriate
d him at times. Yes, they were getting stronger; slowly, steadily, he'd progressed to the point where he actually could stand for a few seconds. But that wouldn't help him now when Sylvia needed him. So he had to sit here, trapped in this ungainly, wheeled contraption and watch the woman he loved suffer. At times like this he—

  A harsh voice broke through his thoughts.

  You!

  Alan twisted in his chair, searching for the source. He saw a tall, stoop-shouldered man with unruly dark hair standing in the hallway that led to the kitchen. His head was in constant motion, twisting back and forth, up and down, but his wild-eyed gaze remained pinned on Mr. Veilleur.

  All around him was frozen silence. Even Jeffy fell quiet. The room had become a tableau.

  "He hates you!"

  Father Ryan came up behind him and gently took his arm, saying, "It's all right, Nick. Come back here with—"

  "No." The man snatched his arm out of the priest's grasp and pointed a trembling finger at Veilleur. "He hates you so! He wants you to suffer!" He pointed to his head. "Here!" Then to his heart. "And here! And then he plans to make you suffer the tortures of the damned!"

  Alan glanced at Veilleur and saw no sign of shock or fear in his wrinkled features. He looked like a man who was hearing exactly what he'd expected to hear. But his clear blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

  "Come, Nick," Father Ryan was saying, trying to turn the man back toward the kitchen. "You're making a scene."

  "Let him stay a moment," Veilleur said, stepping closer to Nick. Jeffy trailed along, clutching his leg. "This is your friend? The one who went into the hole yesterday?"

  The priest nodded sadly. "What's left of him."

  Into the hole? Alan had heard the news reports about yesterday's tragic expedition. A physicist and a geologist had been lowered into the depths, and the geologist had died in transit. Here was the survivor. What had happened to him down there?

  "I've seen this before," Veilleur said to the priest. "On occasion, in the old days, one of the rare persons who survived a trek into a chaos hole returned sensitized to the Enemy." He turned to the man called Nick. "Tell me, my friend, do you know where Rasalom is?"