Nightworld ac-6

by F. Paul Wilson

  "Tore her up bad, didn't they," he said, then his face screwed up and he began to sob. "Just like they tore up my Jane!"

  Jack didn't know what to do. What do you say to a crying drunk? He put a hand on the guy's quaking shoulder.

  "Hang around. Maybe I can help you out."

  The guy shook his head and stumbled off down the sidewalk, still sobbing. Jack hurried up the steps to Walt Duran's apartment house. He pressed the button for Walt's room but got no answering buzz. The glass panel in the front door was broken. Maybe the buzzer was too. Jack reached through the shattered pane and turned the inside knob. Then he hurried up to the third floor.

  Despite repeated knocks, Walt didn't answer his door. Concerned now, Jack pulled the piece of clear, flexible plastic he kept in his back pocket, slipped it between the door and the jamb, and jimmied the latch. The door swung open.

  "Oh, jeez," Jack said as he viewed the carnage within.

  The front room was a shambles of shattered glass, torn upholstery, and broken furniture. Jack dodged through the wreckage and hurried to the bathroom where he'd installed Walt last night. Empty, damn it. He went to the one remaining place to look, the tiny bedroom.

  Blood. Blood on the sheets, on the floor, on the transparent daggers remaining in the frame of the smashed bedroom window.

  "Walt," Jack said softly, staring at the dry brown streaks on the glass. "Why didn't you come back with me last night? Why didn't you stay locked up like I told you?"

  Angry and sad, and not sure which to give in to, he wandered back to the bathroom. Walt's metal-working tools were set up across the rust-stained tub. But where were the necklaces? He probably hadn't finished them, but Jack knew he'd started them.

  And what was Jack going to do without the copies?

  Then he spotted something silvery gray and serpentine in the tub, under the work board. He dropped to his knees and reached in. Out came a necklace.

  Jack cradled it in his hands and stared at it. The sculpted, crescent-shaped links, the weird engraved inscriptions, the pair of topazes with dark centers. The look of it, weight of it…a deluge of memories, most of them bad, engulfed him. He especially remembered the night he had worn the genuine article, how it had kept him alive when he should have died, how removing it had damn near killed him.

  He shook off the past and felt a lump form in his throat for the man who had made this.

  "Walt," he whispered. "You were the best."

  He reached into the tub and found the second necklace. But when he got a good look at it, he groaned. It was only half a necklace. The links on the left side were blank. Walt hadn't got around to engraving them before…well, before whatever had happened to him.

  One and a half necklaces wasn't going to cut it. Jack's plan required two phonies to get the two real ones.

  He got to his feet and stuffed the completed necklace into his pocket. He'd have to come up with a new plan.

  Out on the street again, he looked around for the drunk and spotted him sitting on the curb at the corner. He called to him, but the guy was absorbed in staring down at the sewer grate beneath his feet. Jack walked toward him.

  "Hey, fella!" he called. "I'll get you to a safe place where you can sober up."

  The guy looked up. "Somebod's downair," he said, pointing into the sewer. "Can't see'm but I hear 'm movin' 'round."

  Jack wondered if people were hiding in the sewers from the night things.

  "Swell. But I don't think you'll fit through that opening, so—"

  "Probly c'use a drink," the guy said and reached down to pour some of his rum through the grate.

  Something flashed up from the sewer, something long and thick and brown whipped out and grabbed the drunk by his neck and yanked him down face first onto the grate, nearly breaking his spine in the process. Then it began tugging him into the opening in the curb face. Not slowly, smoothly, inexorably, but with violent heaves, accompanied by sprays of blood and frantically but futilely flailing arms and legs. Three heaves did it. Before Jack could recover from his shock and take a single step forward to help, the man was gone. All that remained behind were splashes of blood and a bottle of rum on its side, slowly emptying its contents into the sewer after its owner.

  Jack backed up a few steps, then turned and ran for Ralph. There weren't people hiding in the sewers from the night things, there were night things—big night things—down there hiding from the day.

  Am I going to lose you too? Carol thought as she stood next to Bill in his bedroom and helped him pack a small duffel bag with some extra clothes for the trip.

  Why was it always she who was left behind? Jim had died and left her—although that certainly wasn't of his choosing. And her son—at the time she had thought of him as her son—had left her. Hank had run off last night, and now Bill was preparing to fly to Rumania.

  "What are your chances of getting back?"

  "I don't know," Bill said. "Not great, I think."

  "Oh." Carol couldn't manage any more than that.

  "Do I sound brave?" Bill said, straightening and looking at her. "I hope so. Because I sure as hell don't feel brave. I mean, I want to do this, but I don't want to die or even get hurt doing this. But I've got to do something."

  "Can I go with you?"

  Anything would be better than being left behind again, especially now when she had nothing else to do but sit around and wait for Hank's call. A call she was sure would never come. And that certainty hurt. She and Hank hadn't had the romance of the ages, but to pack up everything and sneak off like that…

  Even if he did call, she wouldn't go back to him. She didn't want to be with somebody who'd do that to her. And then there was the matter of that crazed look in his eyes. She had to face it: She no longer trusted her husband.

  "To Rumania?" Bill said, staring at her. "It's too dangerous."

  "Is anyplace safe anymore?"

  Even the daytime was no longer safe. A rather shaken Jack had returned a short while ago with a story of horrors hiding in the sewers and storm drains.

  "This place is. And Glaeken seems to want you around."

  "But why? What can I do besides help him take care of Magda? Not that I mind, but what else?"

  "I don't know. Maybe you're part of the equation. I don't pretend to understand why he's doing what he's doing. Sometimes I wonder if he knows why he's doing what he's doing. But he's all we've got. And if he says we need these bits of metal from Rumania and I'm the only one left who can get them, then I'll try to get them. And if he says you're important to the solution to what's happening to the world, then I'll go along with him. He hasn't let us down yet."

  " 'Part of the equation,'" she said, her throat constricting around the words. "I've been part of some sort of equation since I got pregnant and provided the little body that allowed this…this monster back into the world!" Her voice cracked. "He took my baby, Bill! He kicked out whoever my real baby might have been and took over his tiny body. And now he's going to take you!"

  She felt Bill's arms go around her shoulders and pull her tight against him. His flannel shirt smelled lightly of detergent, and as its rough surface pressed against her cheek, the thought that he really should use fabric softener wafted inanely across her mind. She slipped her arms around his waist and pulled herself closer. If she could just hold him here like this, it soon would be too late for him leave, and then she wouldn't lose him.

  And she realized then how much she wanted him. Not like the last time, not like back in '68 when the beast within twisted her into trying to seduce Bill from his vows. That had been lust, induced lust. This was something else. This was love. An old love, following a long and winding road from the puppy love when they'd dated in their teens, to something deep and real. In a way, perhaps she'd always loved Bill. And now that he'd turned away from his church and his old beliefs, now that the cocoon of the priesthood had been unraveled from around him, he seemed real again, flesh and blood again. She wanted to tell him how she felt but the
decades-old memories of that degrading scene of attempted seduction still echoed around her and held her back. And yet, if she didn't tell him now, would she ever get the chance again?

  Jack's voice shattered the moment: "Time's a-wastin', Bill. We've got to make a stop in Monroe on the way."

  Monroe…her home town. Bill's too. Where Rasalom had usurped her child's body at conception. The torrent of memories was cut off as Bill pulled free of her arms.

  "Got to go, Carol."

  He went to kiss her on the forehead. Impulsively, Carol lifted her face and kissed him on the lips. From the way he pulled back and the way he looked at her, she knew that he hadn't forgotten 1968 either.

  "Come back to me, Bill," she said softly. "I don't want to lose you too."

  He swallowed, nodded. "Okay. Yeah." His voice was sandpaper dry. "I'll be back. We can talk more about this then." He picked up his duffel and started for the door, then stopped and turned. "I love you, Carol. I can't think of a moment when I didn't."

  And then he was gone. But his final words lingered after him, filling Carol with a bewildering mix of emotions. She wanted to laugh with joy; instead she sat on the edge of the bed and cried.

  WINS-AM

  —and at sea, the QE2 appears to be missing. She was last heard from Sunday evening. It is feared she is sunk. If she had hit one of the gravity anomalies she would have radioed for help. The single air-sea rescue plane that was sent out has found no survivors.

  LONG ISLAND

  It took Jack longer than he'd planned to get to Monroe. A lot of traffic outbound on the Long Island Expressway. Maybe they thought it would be better out on the Island. He'd talked to Doc Bulmer on the phone this morning, and from what he'd said, things didn't seem a whole hell of a lot quieter out here.

  So he did the best speed he could as the wind fluttered and whistled through the rips in the top. Nick sat in the back seat, his zombie stare fixed straight ahead. Bill wasn't much better as company. He sat in the passenger seat and said nothing, just gazed out the window, lost in a world of his own. Jack wondered what was going on between him and that Mrs. Treece. Her husband had run off and left her. Was Bill moving in? He'd been a priest for most of his life. He had a lot of lost time to make up for. Jack couldn't blame him. She was attractive, even if she had a good ten or fifteen years on Jack. But he sensed there was more to it than opportunity knocking. Those two seemed to go back a long way.

  So Jack played the radio. A number of stations were gone, nothing but static in their slots on the band, but a few DJs and newsfolk were hanging in there, still playing music, still broadcasting the news, keeping their listeners informed to the best of their ability as to what was fact and what was merely rumor. He had to hand it to them. They had more guts than he would have given them credit for.

  He clicked it off. He wasn't in the mood for music.

  "So, Bill," he said, jerking his thumb toward the back seat. "How are you going to handle Edgar Cayce back there?"

  Bill turned from the window and fixed Jack with a stare.

  "Don't make fun of him. He's an old friend of mine and he's a victim, just like a lot of other people these days."

  Jack instinctively bristled at the sound of someone telling him what to do, then realized that Bill was right.

  "Sorry. I didn't know him before he…before he went down into the hole."

  "He was brilliant. Hopefully he'll be brilliant again. A mind like a computer, but a good heart too."

  "Bit of a spread in age between the two of you. How'd you meet?"

  "I was his father for a few years."

  When Jack shot him a questioning look, Bill went on and explained about his years as director of a Jesuit orphanage in Queens, and how a certain little boy had died and how he'd spent five years on the run as a result. The story fascinated Jack. He'd been seeing this guy every day lately and never guessed what kind of a man he was, or the hell he'd been through. How could he? Bill seemed to have built a wall around himself, as if he was practicing being a nobody.

  But now that Jack had got a peek over that wall, he decided he liked Bill Ryan.

  And besides that, the story made the trip pass faster. Here they were already, in Monroe, on Shore Drive.

  Ba must have been watching from one of the windows. He stepped out the front door as they pulled in the driveway. He approached the car with only a Macy's shopping bag dangling from his hand. The Nash lady, Doc Buhner, and the kid, Jeffy, were all clustered at the front door to see him off, like the Cleavers sending an Oriental Wally off to war.

  "I'd better get in the back," Bill said. "He'll never fit."

  As he shifted to the rear, Jack got out, waved to Ba, then trotted to the front door.

  "Glaeken wants me to 'urge' you folks—his word—to come stay with him in the city. He says it's going to get a lot worse out here."

  "We'll be okay," the doc said. "We've got our own protection."

  Jack glanced around at all the steel storm shades. The place looked like a fortress.

  "Maybe you do," he said, nodding. "But I promised him I'd ask."

  "You've kept your promise to Glaeken," the Nash lady said softly, and Jack thought he saw tears in her eyes. "Now keep one to me: You bring Ba back, okay?" Her voice sounded like it was going to break. "You bring him back just the way he left, you hear?"

  "I hear you, Mrs. Nash," he said.

  Jack was touched by her show of emotion. No doubt about it, she genuinely cared about Ba. Had real feeling for the guy. Maybe he'd misjudged her. Maybe she wasn't quite the hardcase she pretended to be.

  "Either we both come back," he added, "or neither of us comes back. You've got my word on that."

  "I'll hold you to it," she said, her eyes steely blue.

  As Jack hurried back to the car he figured he'd damn well better get Ba back safe and sound.

  The sign atop the hanger read TWIN AIRWAYS in bold red letters. Tension coiled around Bill's gut as they bumped toward it along a rutted dirt road. Where were they? Somewhere off the Jericho Turnpike was all Bill knew.

  And the Ashe brothers. Who were they? He'd never heard of them and didn't know a thing about them and yet he was going to get into a jet and let one of them fly him across the Atlantic. And why? Because this fellow named Jack—who had about a dozen last names and had an immediate avoidance response to anything labeled Police, who carried two or three pistols and God knew how many other weapons at all times, who called his ancient Corvair Ralph and drove it like a maniac—had said the Ashe Brothers were "good guys."

  Glaeken, old boy, he thought as Jack skidded to a halt beside the hanger, I hope this trip is worth it.

  Two reed-thin, blue-eyed men in their mid-thirties with fair, shoulder-length hair came out to meet them. They might have been mirror images had not one of them sported a stubbly beard and the other a long, droopy mustache. Both wore beat-up jeans so low on their hips they looked ready to fall off; the bearded one wore a purple paisley shirt tucked in behind a Jack Daniels belt buckle. The one with the mustache had on a fringed buckskin jacket over a tee-shirt.

  "They look like holdovers from the sixties, Jack," Bill said softly out of the corner of his mouth.

  "It's okay. They sort of think they're the Allman Brothers. Not really, of course. I mean, Duane being dead and all. But soul-mates, so to speak. They are from Georgia and they do like the blues, but trust me: You're looking at two of the best damn pilots going. Not a place in the world with an airport they haven't been."

  Bill wondered if he had that much trust left in him.

  Jack introduced them as Frank and Joe. Joe had the beard and the JD buckle and he was going to be Bill's pilot. But Bill's flight seemed to be of secondary importance. The big concern seemed to be getting Jack and Ba into the air as soon as possible. After payment was made—a sack of gold coins transferred from the Corvair's front-end trunk to the Ashe brothers' office safe—Joe left Bill and Nick in the tiny office while he went out to help get his brother's Gulfstream
air-borne. Twenty minutes later, Bill heard jet engines whine, then roar off into the western sky.

  "Shouldn't we be hurrying too?" Bill said when Joe returned to the office.

  "I reckon," he said with a heavy drawl. "But it's not as critical for us as for them. If Frank hustles his ass he's got a damn good chance of staying in daylight all the way to Hawaii. Not us. We're heading east—right into the dark. It's about 6:00 p.m. in Rumania now. Already past sunset."

  His expression showed how little he relished the trip.

  "How did you wind up with us?"

  "We flipped a coin."

  "And you lost."

  Joe Ashe shrugged. "Six o' one, half a dozen of t' other. We're talking round trips here. Frank'll have to fly east on the way home while we're flying west." He frowned. "Maybe I should say it's four of one and half a dozen of the other. We'll have a shorter daylight window on the way back." He grunted. "Shit. I did get the short end of this stick. That Frank's always tricking me. That boy's my evil twin, he is."

  Great, Bill thought. I've got the slow one.

  "You want to back out?" Bill said, almost hoping he'd say yes.

  Joe Ashe grinned. "Nah. Said I'd do it and so it's a done deal. Unless o' course you've changed your mind."

  Bill shook his head. "I'm afraid we're stuck with each other."

  "Guess so. But what about your friend there. He's lookin' right poorly, I'd say."

  "He's…he hasn't been well lately."

  "Bummer. Maybe you ought to leave him behind. Things could get a mite hairy on this little jaunt."

  "I know. I wish I could leave him, but I need him along."

  "You don't say." Joe studied Nick's blank face a moment, then turned to Bill. "What the hell for?"

  "I don't know yet." But Glaeken assures me I will.

  Joe let out a soft, low whistle through his teeth.

  "Okay, pal. You're the boss. Let's roll. I've got the flight plan all worked out. We've got a ten- to eleven-hour trip ahead of us, and a seven-hour time difference between here and Ploiesti."