Nightworld ac-6

by F. Paul Wilson

  The tentacles dragged his legs through the opening at the bottom of the door. The jagged wood raked the backs of his thighs and then dug into the flesh of his hips and buttocks as he became wedged into the opening.

  He wasn't going to fit through. At least not in one piece.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God, I don't want to die like this!

  And suddenly amid the fear and the grief and the pain he realized that he had to die a certain way. He'd been given no choice in how death was coming to him but he had something to say about how he met it.

  Silently.

  He groaned as the traction on his legs increased and the ligaments and tendons and skin and muscles began to stretch past their tolerances.

  Quiet!

  He reached up and grabbed the thin cotton blanket from the wheelchair and stuffed it deep into his mouth, gagging as the fabric brushed the back of his throat.

  Good. Gag. Then he couldn't scream. And he mustn't scream.

  Oh God, the pain!

  He had to be quiet because if he let the pain and fear out in a scream, Sylvia would wake and come for him…he knew her, knew if she thought he was in danger, she wouldn't hesitate, she'd charge, she'd wade through a storm of bugs and tentacles to get to him…

  Alan screeched silently into his blanket-stuffed mouth as the ball at the head of his right femur twisted free and dislocated from the hip socket with a grinding explosion of agony, and screamed again as the left one followed.

  Quiet, quiet, QUIET!

  …because it was too late for him and if she came upstairs they'd have her too, and after they got Sylvia, they'd get Jeffy and then Glaeken wouldn't be able to assemble whatever it was he had to assemble and the Enemy would win it all and the bugs would feast on everybody…he just prayed he'd bought Sylvia and Jeffy enough time…prayed his body would stay wedged in the opening and block the bugs out for a while because soon Toad Hall would be swarming with them and if they had enough time they'd gnaw through the cellar door and all this agony would be for nothing…so he had to hold on and keep quiet for just a few more seconds because in just a few more seconds it would be over and…

  Alan's blanket drank the howl that burst from his throat as his right leg ripped free of his body and slid away into the night and yet he smiled within as he felt his consciousness draining away in the warm red stream pumping from his ruptured femoral artery, smiled because there's nothing quieter than a dead man.

  WINS-AM

  dead air

  "Alan?"

  Sylvia awoke with a start and stared wildly around her, momentarily disoriented in the darkness. Then she saw the candle flickering on the ping-pong table and remembered she was in the basement. She reached out a hand and found Jeffy's slumbering form curled next to her on the old Castro convertible.

  She squinted at the luminous dial on her watch. 7:30. Had she been asleep that long? She must have been more tired than she'd thought. At least the night had gone quickly. Sunrise was due at 9:10. Another long, long night was drawing to a close. She stretched. Soon Alan would be knocking on the upstairs door, telling them all to rise and—

  Then she heard it.

  On the upstairs door—scratching. She leapt out of bed and hurried to the foot of the steps to listen again.

  No—not scratching. Gnawing.

  Trembling, chewing her upper lip, Sylvia crept up the stairs, telling herself with each tread that she was wrong, that it couldn't be, that her ears had to be playing dirty tricks on her. Half-way up she caught the smell and abruptly ran out of denials. She rushed the rest of the way to the door where she pressed the flats of her hands against the solid oak panels and felt the vibrations as countless teeth scored the outer surface.

  Alan! Dear God, where's Alan?

  She turned the knob and gripped it with both hands as she leaned her shoulder against the door. Bugs in Toad Hall. She had to see. She could hear them and smell them but she had to see them to believe there were that many of the horrors in her house. She edged the door open a crack and saw a sliver of the hallway. The creatures immediately attacked the opening and she slammed the door shut. But she'd seen enough.

  Bugs. The hall was choked with them—floating, drifting, darting, bumping, hanging on the walls.

  Sylvia began to tremble. If the halls had been taken over by the bugs, where was Alan? To invade Toad Hall they had to get past Alan.

  "Alan?" she cried, her face against the vibrating door.

  Maybe he got to the movie room and locked himself in there. Maybe he was safe.

  But those were only words. She could find no place in her heart and mind that truly believed them. A sob built in her throat and ripped free as a scream.

  "ALAN!"

  HBO

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  2 • HOMECOMINGS

  MONROE, LONG ISLAND

  "Go faster, Jack. Go faster, please."

  Ba wished he were behind the wheel. As the familiar streets and storefronts of downtown Monroe flashed by, his anxiety increased with every passing block. Empty streets, smashed storefronts, and only a few frightened people hurrying through the waning afternoon light. The town had deteriorated badly in the two days since he'd left.

  "Easy, Ba," Jack said beside him. "I'm doing the best I can. Hell, I'm barely slowing down for stop signs, and none of the traffic lights are working. If we run into someone crossing our path we may not get there at all."

  Bill Ryan laid a hand gently on Ba's shoulder.

  "Jack's right. Between us we've traveled more than half way around the globe and back. It'd be a shame to crack up and die so close to home. This is, after all, the car that was labeled 'Unsafe at any speed.'"

  "A lie!" Jack said vehemently. "Nader's first Big Lie!"

  Ba disliked letting other people drive, but this little American car that had been discontinued even before he'd come to America had no space for him behind the wheel. He closed his eyes and willed the car closer to Toad Hall.

  He had spent the entire trip home from Maui in this state of anguished fear. He could not escape the notion that something terrible was happening at Toad Hall without him. He had been unable to get through to the Missus from the phone in the jet. Just a word or two from the Missus, that was all he would have required to ease his mind. But he could not make the connection.

  Fortunately the trip had gone well. They had caught the jet stream and made it back to Long Island without a fuel stop in California. Even more fortunate, Bill Ryan and Nick had already arrived and were waiting for them when they touched down.

  Ba had tried to call again from the hangar phone but still there was no response. And so now he was being driven toward the scene of a tragedy. He knew it. He should not have left Toad Hall. If anything had happened to the Missus and her family…

  Here was Shore Drive. Now the front wall of Toad Hall's grounds, the gate posts, the curving driveway, the willows, Toad Hall itself, the front door—

  "Oh, shit," Jack said softly beside Ba. "Oh, no."

  "Missus!"

  The word escaped Ba when he saw how the bottom half of the front door had been smashed through and torn away. He was out the door and running toward the house before the car stopped. He took the front steps in a bound. The door hung open, angled on its hinges. He burst through and skidded to a halt in the foyer.

  Carnage. Furniture strewn about, wallpaper hanging in tatters from the walls like sunburned skin, the Doctor's wheelchair sitting empty in the middle of the floor, and blood. Dried blood puddled on the threshold and splattering the outer surface of the door.

  Fear such as he'd never known gripped Ba's throat and squeezed. He'd battled the Cong and fought off the pirates on the South China Sea, but they'd never made him feel weak and helpless like the sight of blood in Toad Hall.

  He ran through the house then, calling for the Missus, the Doctor, Jeffy. Through the deserted upstairs, back down to the movie room, to another staggering halt before the cellar door. The door stood ajar, its finish gnawed off,
its beveled panels splintered, nearly obliterated. Ba pulled it open the rest of the way and stood at the top of the stairs.

  "Missus? Doctor? Jeffy?"

  No answer from below. He spotted the flashlight lying on the second step. He picked it up and descended slowly, dreading what he'd find.

  Or wouldn't find.

  The basement was empty. A red candle had burned down to a puddle on the ping-pong table. Ba's finger trembled as he reached out and touched the pooled wax. Cold.

  Feeling dead inside, he dragged himself up the stairs and wandered out to the front drive. Jack and Bill were standing by the car, waiting for him, watching him.

  Bill said, "Are they…?"

  "They're gone," Ba said. His voice was so low, he could barely hear himself.

  "Hey, Ba," Jack said. "Maybe they left for—"

  "There's blood. So much blood."

  "Aw, Jeez," Jack said softly.

  Bill lowered his head and pressed a hand over his eyes.

  "What do you want us to do, Ba?" Jack said. "You name it, we'll do it."

  A good friend, this Jack. They had only met a few days ago and already he was acting like a brother. But nothing could ease the pain in Ba's heart, the growing grief, the bitter self-loathing for leaving the people he loved—his family—unguarded. Why had he—?

  He whirled at the sound of a car engine starting in the garage at the rear of the house. He knew that engine. It belonged to the 1938 Graham—the Missus' favorite car.

  Fighting the joy that surged up in him, afraid to acknowledge it for fear that it might be for nothing, Ba stumbled into a run toward the rear. He had gone only a few steps when the Graham's shark-nosed grille appeared around the corner of the house. The Missus was behind the wheel, Jeffy beside her. Her mouth formed an O when she saw him. The old car stalled as she braked and then she was out the door and running across the grass toward Ba, arms outflung, face twisted in uncontrollable grief.

  "Oh, Ba! Ba! We waited all day for you! I thought we'd lost you too!"

  And then the Missus did something she had never done before. She threw her arms around Ba, clung to him and began to sob against his chest.

  Ba did not know what to do. He held his arms akimbo, not sure of where to put them. As overjoyed as he was to see her alive, it certainly was not his place to embrace the Missus. But her grief was so deep, so unrestrained…he had never seen her like this, never guessed she was capable of this magnitude of sorrow.

  And then Jeffy ran up, and he, too, was crying. He threw his arms around Ba's left leg and hung there.

  Gently, gingerly, hesitantly, Ba lowered one hand to the Missus' shoulder and the other to Jeffy's head. His elation at seeing them was tempered by the slowly dawning realization that the picture was incomplete.

  Someone was missing.

  "The Doctor, Missus?"

  "Oh, Ba, he's gone," she sobbed. "Those…things …killed him and dragged him off! He's gone, Ba! Alan's gone and we'll never see him again!"

  For a moment Ba thought he glimpsed the Doctor's face peering at him from the shadows in the back seat of the Graham, thought he felt the warmth of his easy smile, the aura of his deep honor and quiet courage.

  And then he faded from view and something happened to Ba, something that hadn't happened since his boyhood days in the fishing village where he was born.

  Ba began to weep.

  As the Change progresses above, so progresses the Change below.

  Rasalom's new form grows ever larger. Suspended in its cavern, it is the size of an elephant now. To make room for him, more earth drops away into the soft yellow glow of the bottomless pit below.

  With his senses penetrating deep into the earth, Rasalom knows that the Change is progressing unimpeded, and is far ahead of schedule. Chaos reigns above. The sweet honey nectar of fear and misery, the ambrosia of rage and ruin continues to seep through the strata of the earth to nourish him, help him grow, make him ever stronger.

  And in the center of the dying city, Glaeken's building stands unmolested, an island of tranquility in a sea of torment. Members of his pathetic little company now rushing back from their trips here and there around the globe with their recovered bits and pieces of the first and second swords. All of them, still clinging so doggedly to their hope.

  Good. Rasalom wants to let that hope grow until it is the last great hope left for all humanity. Let them think they've been doing something important, something epochal. The higher their hope lifts them, the longer the fall when they learn they've struggled and died for nothing.

  But Rasalom senses them taking comfort in their relative safety, drawing strength from their comradeship. Their peace, uneasy though it may be, is a burr in his hide. He cannot allow this to continue unchallenged. He does not wish to destroy them—yet. But he does wish to breach their insulation, unsettle them, vex them, start them looking over their shoulders.

  One of them must die.

  Not out in the streets, but in the heart of their safe haven. It must be an ugly death—nothing quick and clean, but slow and painful and messy. And to make the death as unsettling as possible, it must befall a dear member of their number, one who seems the most innocent, the most innocuous, one they never would expect him to single out for such degradation.

  The new lips gestating within the sac twist into a semblance of a smile.

  Time for a little fun.

  In the tunnel leading to the cavern, Rasalom's skin, shed days ago, begins to move. It ripples, swells, fills out to living proportions. Then it rises and begins its journey toward the surface.

  As it walks, it tests its voice.

  "Mother."

  Ba should be driving this, Bill thought as he raced along the deserted LIE, aiming the old Graham for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel like a bullet from a gun. He glanced at his watch. 3:32. Less than forty minutes to sundown. He would have preferred the Queensboro Bridge but remembered that was impassable due to the effects of a gravity hole.

  Jack rode shotgun—literally. He sat high in the passenger seat with this huge short-barreled thing—he'd called it a "Spas"—held up in plain sight. Ba sat behind Bill with a similar shotgun in plain view. The two warriors were sending a message: Don't mess with this car. Nick sat behind Jack, Sylvia and the boy were squeezed in the middle, their cat on the boy's lap, their one-eyed dog panting on the floor.

  That left the driving chore to Bill. He knew he wasn't the greatest driver, but if they ran into one of the roving gangs that had taken over the city during the day he figured he'd do better with a steering wheel than with a shotgun.

  He glanced at Jack who'd been strangely silent and withdrawn since their reunion at the airport. He was definitely on edge. Something eating at him, something he wasn't talking about.

  Bill gave a mental shrug. If it concerned them, they'd find out soon enough.

  The further he drove into Queens, the more obstacles on the expressway; he wove as quickly as he dared around and through the litter of wrecked or abandoned cars. They slowed him and he wanted to fly.

  Carol…he hungered for the sight of her, for the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand. She consumed his thoughts, his feelings. He wished he could have got a line through to her from the airport, just to let her know he'd made it back and was coming home.

  "Better hurry," Nick said from the back.

  "Going as fast as I can, Nick."

  "Better go faster," he said. His tone was completely flat. He'd reverted to near cataonia since leaving the keep. "It's Carol."

  The car swerved slightly as Bill's fingers tightened on the wheel.

  "What about Carol?"

  "She's in trouble. She needs help."

  WNYW-TV

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  MANHATTAN

  The head was waiting in the kitchen.

  Carol was on her way back from Magda's room, carrying her lunch tray, worrying about Bill and why she hadn't heard from him yet. She screamed and dropped the tray as she rounded the corner
and saw it floating in the air. She recognized the face.

  "Jimmy!" she cried, then got control of herself.

  Not a head, just a face. And not Jimmy. Not her son. She'd almost stopped thinking of him as her son.

  Rasalom. It was Rasalom.

  The face smiled—an Arctic gale registered greater warmth. Then its lips moved, forming words, but the voice seemed to come from everywhere. Or was it inside her head?

  "Hello, mother."

  Carol backed out of the kitchen. The face followed.

  "Mommy, don't leave me!" The tone was mocking.

  Carol stopped retreating when her back came up against the dining room table. She looked around for Glaeken but knew he wouldn't be there. He'd gone out hours ago and had left her with Magda. Carol swallowed and found her voice.

  "Don't call me that!"

  "Why not? That's what you are."

  Carol shook her head. "No. You grew inside me for nine months, but you were never my child. And I was never your mother."

  Another smile, as cold as the first. "I sympathize with your efforts to dissociate yourself from me. I understand them because I've tried to do the same in regard to you. Perhaps you've had more success than I."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The bond of flesh. Since the day I was conceived within you, I've worn the flesh you gave me. It links us. I don't like it any more than you do, but it is a fact, one that won't go away. One we both have to deal with."

  "I've learned to deal with it—by not thinking about it."

  "But that doesn't cancel it. I've given this a lot of thought and there's a better way to deal with it, a way that allows me to come to terms with my fleshy link to you. A way that can benefit you as well."