Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack)

by F. Paul Wilson

  As Jack made a left into the small graveled front yard he noticed ripped and tattered screens, smashed windows—like every other house they’d passed on their way out from the city.

  “This doesn’t look good.”

  Bill shrugged. “The fire’s going, and Glaeken said…”

  “Yeah. Glaeken said.”

  He parked and took the wooden box with him when he got out. Bill accompanied him to the door. To the right lay what appeared to be a small vegetable garden, but nothing was growing. The front door opened before they reached the steps and a grizzled old man glared at them through the remnants of the screen in the upper half of the storm door.

  “Took your time getting here.”

  His shock of gray hair stuck out in all directions. He needed a shave like his stained undershirt needed to be washed—or better yet, tossed out and replaced.

  Jack remembered him from two years ago: George Haskins, the man they were looking for. Except now he looked … younger. No matter. This was the guy.

  “You’re expecting us?” Jack said.

  How could that be? The phones had been out for days.

  “Yeah. You got the metal?”

  “May we come in?” Bill said.

  “I don’t think they’d like that. You see—”

  Jack heard a garbled babble from somewhere behind the solid lower half of the storm door.

  Haskins looked down and spoke toward the floor. “All right, all right!” Then he looked up at Jack again and thrust his hand through the opening. “They’re real anxious to get started. Gimme the metal.”

  Jack handed him the box. Haskins pulled it inside and handed it to someone down by his feet.

  “There! You happy now? You gonna shut up and leave me alone now? Good!” He looked up at Jack again. “They been driving me crazy waiting for this stuff.”

  “Who?”

  “My tenants. I been spending my nights down in the crawlspace with ’em. They been keepin’ the cooters out. If it hadn’t—”

  More babbling.

  “Okay, okay. They say come back in about four hours. If they really rush it, they should be done by then.”

  Curious, Jack stepped up on the stoop and peeked through the opening. He saw maybe a dozen scurrying forms, like midgets, only they couldn’t have been more than eighteen inches tall. And they looked furry.

  “What the—?”

  Haskins moved to block his view.

  “Four hours. They’ll have it for you then.”

  “Yeah, but who are ‘they’?” Jacked remembered Glaeken mentioning “smallfolk.”

  “My tenants. Been with me since a little before the Beatles broke up, just waitin’ for this day—‘when time is unfurled and we’re called by the world,’ as they put it. Seems to me like time and ever’thing else is unfurled these days. So go away and come back later. They don’t want nobody around while they’re workin’.”

  He closed the door.

  “Four hours,” Bill said, looking at his watch as they returned to the car. “It’s a little after eleven now. That’ll be after dark.”

  Jack sat behind the wheel, unease gnawing at his stomach. Bill was right. According to the Sapir curve, this morning’s sunrise had been the last. After four hours and forty-two minutes of light, the sun would set for the last time at 3:01 P.M. No more day forever after. Only night.

  And then there’d be no quarter from the “cooters,” as Haskins called them.

  Damn. Could have been to Abe’s by now.

  “How the hell are we going to get back?”

  Jack started the car. “Drive. How else?”

  He pulled out and headed back down the road, wondering how to kill the time. No point in heading back to the city. They’d have to spend it in Monroe.

  “What is it with this town?” Jack said.

  “Village,” Bill said. “North Shore towns like to refer to themselves as villages.”

  “Fine. Village. But what gives here? Every time I turn around, the name pops up. You’re from Monroe, Carol’s from Monroe, the doc, the Nash lady and her boy are from Monroe. And now we’re back out here again making a delivery to some old coot with a house full of furry dwarfs. And I don’t want to get started on what I’ve been through out here in the past few years.”

  “I’ve wondered about that myself, and I think I know.”

  “The ‘burst of Otherness’ people have told me about?”

  Bill frowned. “Haven’t heard that. Take a right at the end of the road down here and I’ll show you.”

  Bill guided him to a residential neighborhood, to Collier Street. They stopped in front of number 124, a three-bedroom ranch.

  “This is where it happened,” Bill said, his voice strangely husky as he stared at the house through his side window. “This is where Rasalom re-entered the world more than a quarter century after Glaeken thought he’d killed him. It was in the house that used to stand on this lot—the original was set afire—that Carol conceived the child whose body was usurped by Rasalom. That single event has left a stain on this town, given it some sort of psychic pheromone that draws odd people and creates a fertile environment for weird and strange occurrences.”

  “Like those dwarfs out in the marsh.”

  “Right. They must have sensed Rasalom’s return, must have known they’d be needed, so they’ve been camped out there with George Haskins for decades, waiting for their moment. Now it’s come. Same with the Dat-tay-vao. It traveled halfway around the world to end up in Monroe, where it lived for a while in Alan Bulmer, then moved on to Jeffy. From what I can gather, that journey began about the time Rasalom was reconceived.”

  “So it must have known that it would be needed too.”

  “So it seems. But there were other occurrences back in that first year, a cluster of hideously deformed children born in November and early December. No one could explain it then, but now I can see that they all must have been conceived around the same time as Rasalom. His very presence in town must have mutated them in embryo.”

  Jack nodded. He’d heard about that cluster of deformities and, to his regret, had even met some of them.

  “That must have been the ‘burst of Otherness’ I mentioned.”

  “Seems likely.” Bill shook his head. “Those deformed children … major tragedies for the families involved but merely warnings of what was to come.”

  Jack mulled that as Bill guided him through the town, past the high school where he’d been a football star, past the new house built on the site of his family home, burned to the ground, killing both of his elderly parents.

  “I’m sure Rasalom was responsible for that too,” he said in a low voice, thick with emotion. He ground a fist into his palm. “So many others—friends, acquaintances, children! My folks, Jim, Lisl, Renny, Nick, and Danny—dear God, Danny! Damn, I’ve got scores to settle!”

  Jack put a hand on Bill’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “We’ll get the bastard. We’ll make him pay.”

  Sure we will.

  “Meanwhile, let me show you something—if I can find it.”

  It took Jack ten minutes of scouting before he recognized the street. He turned onto it and found the vacant lot.

  “Two years ago, one of those holes opened here—but only for a few minutes.”

  Bill rolled down his window and stared. “Wasn’t that—? Yes! That used to be the old Rubin place. But where’s the house? And I seem to remember a big oak.”

  “House and most of the tree—down the hole.”

  Bill turned to Jack, eyes wide. “The disappearing house! I remember hearing about it but thought it was a Weekly World News story or something along those lines. I never dreamed it happened in Monroe.” He stared out the window again. “The Rubin place … I can’t believe it. But how did you—?”

  Jack put the car in gear. “Long story. But we’ve got time.”

  Jack told it as they wandered around Monroe. The town—village—seemed all
but deserted. No bodies lay about. No bodies anywhere. Probably because unlike the bugs, which merely sucked the juices from their victims, the newer, bigger hole-things devoured their kills. Occasionally Jack spotted fearful faces peering at them from darkened rooms through shattered windows. As they cruised the main drag through the remnants of the downtown harbor-front area, a gang of lupine scavengers began to approach the car.

  Bill lifted one of the Spas-12s.

  Jack looked at him. “You know how to work that thing?”

  “It’s not rocket science, and I almost hope they try something.” He spoke through thin, tight lips. “I’m feeling real mean at the moment.”

  At sight of the shotgun they lost interest and trotted away.

  Jack stared at him. “Even you.”

  “What?”

  “It’s getting to you. Even you’re starting to feel the effects of this craziness.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “Nah. I’ve made my living waiting for guys like that to start something. You’re just beginning to window-shop in the neighborhood where I’ve spent my adult life.”

  Abe’s Place

  “Like a rifle it’s not. Not like a pistol even. Those you must caress, treat gently. A shotgun is a brute that throws not single well-aimed punches, but flurries.”

  She thought of her father and his hunting shotguns, but they were nothing compared to this. The barrels were longer and smaller gauge. She prayed he and mom were all right.

  Focus, she told herself.

  She couldn’t help them, but she could do everything in her power to protect Vicky. And if that meant learning to shoot …

  Gia tried to relax but found it impossible. The surprising weight of the weapon in her hands, the evidence of its destructive power—she was looking at the holes Abe had blown in the barn wall—had her insides coiled into tight little knots.

  And now it was her turn to pull the trigger.

  She and Abe stood side by side in the ravaged barn, three feet or so from its north wall. Vicky watched from a good twenty feet behind them.

  “Okay,” Abe said. “In your hands you hold a fine weapon: a twelve-gauge Benelli M1 Super 90 semiautomatic shotgun. Jack has used one on occasion.”

  Gia didn’t ask what occasion.

  “Its magazine holds seven rounds. With one in the chamber, you’ve got eight shots. We have two of these—one for you and one for me—and lots and lots of double-ought and hardball shells, so don’t worry about saving ammo.”

  “Don’t I have to pump something?” In the movies they always seemed to pump the barrel between shots.

  “Like I said, it’s semiauto. You just pull the trigger when you need to, and if you feel another shot is called for, you pull the trigger again.”

  “What happens when I run out?”

  “I’ll show you how to reload later. First we get you comfortable pulling the trigger. Ready?”

  No, but she nodded anyway.

  “Okay. That hole in the wall there is the worm’s mouth. You do what I did last night: Jam the barrel in there and pull the trigger. Pull it twice. I’ve got you loaded with alternating shot and hardball shells. Give it one of each. That seemed to be enough to back it up last night. Got it? Barrel in, two quick shots, then back up and see if it needs more.”

  Gia nodded. “Got it.”

  “I’ll get your earmuffs on, then go to it. And remember to be ready for the recoil.”

  The ear protectors looked like oversize plastic headphones. Abe adjusted a pair on Gia’s head, then his own, then he turned and signaled Vicky to hold her ears.

  When he nodded the go-ahead, Gia swallowed. God, how guns scared her. But those burrowers scared her more.

  She poked the muzzle into the hole, closed her eyes, and pulled the trigger.

  —and almost wound up on her butt from the recoil.

  Abe had warned her but she hadn’t appreciated how strong it would be. She saw him urging her forward, so she rammed the barrel back into the hole and fired again. This time she was ready and held the weapon steady during discharge.

  Abe was smiling and she knew she was grinning too. She’d done it, and damn if it hadn’t felt good.

  Abe was motioning toward the hole and she faintly heard him shouting, “It’s another one! Get it! Get it!”

  And got it she did.

  They ran the scenario twice more and she blew away two more imaginary worms.

  Yes!

  Then she saw Abe reaching for the shotgun. Was he kidding? She pulled her Benelli out of reach.

  Yes, suddenly it was her Benelli. She loved it. She thought of that bumper sticker she’d always snickered at: You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Now she thought she understood.

  Abe looked puzzled as his lips moved. She removed her ear wear.

  “It’s got to be reloaded,” he said.

  “I’ll reload it. Show me.”

  “All right already, but—”

  He reached again but she wouldn’t give it up. She liked the way it made her feel. She had power. She wouldn’t be helpless against those things. When they came for her and Vicky, she could strike back and drive them off.

  She didn’t want ever to let go of her Benelli. At least not until this was over, one way or another.

  The Horror Channel’s Drive-In Theatre—Special All-Day Edition

  And Soon the Darkness (1970) Levitt/Rickman

  When Time Ran Out (1980) Warner Brothers

  Nothing but the Night (1972) Cinema Systems

  Doomed to Die (1940) Monogram

  Night Must Fall (1937) MGM

  The Dark (1979) Film Ventures

  Dark Star (1972) Bryanston

  Dead of Night (1946) Universal

  Fade to Black (1980) Compass International

  Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973) TV

  Night World (1932) Universal

  Abe’s Place

  She stood with Abe and Vicky on the stone outcropping and stared at the hole in the valley below. Her arms ached from the repeated recoil of the practice, but she was comfortable with the Benelli now, and could reload almost as fast as Abe.

  In the fading light she could make out scores of mounds radiating from the hole. But the ones that had started off in the other direction had curved around and were now pointed toward them.

  “They must have sent out a signal,” Abe muttered. “They all know we’re here.”

  Gia shivered. That meant even more of them gnawing at the bunker tonight. She prayed whatever Jack was involved in would work.

  And soon.

  Monroe, Long Island

  By 2:30 they were back at Haskins’s place. The fire was still burning in the forge in the back, though not as brightly as before. The clang of metal upon metal filled the air.

  “You’re early,” Haskins said at the door, still not inviting them in.

  “We know,” Bill said, “but the dark’s coming and we want to get moving as soon as we can.”

  “Can’t say as I blame you. Just as well you did show up. They’re almost done. Wait in the car and I’ll bring it out to you.”

  Jack hesitated asking, then figured, what the hell. “You wouldn’t happen to have a shortwave, would you?”

  “What fer? Don’t know nobody anywheres.”

  “I do,” Jack said.

  He led the way back to the car. Bill got inside and began fiddling with the radio, trying to find a broadcast of any sort. Jack paced in front, his gut twisting steadily tighter as the gray sky faded toward black.

  “Listen,” Bill said, sticking his head out the window. “The clanging’s stopped.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “Too late. We’re not going to make it back. Even if we had a goddamn plane we couldn’t make it back in one piece.”

  The storm door slammed then, and out came old George Haskins lugging two blanket-wrapped objects in his arms like sick children.

  “There you go,” he said, dumping them in
to Jack’s waiting hands.

  One bundle was square and bulky, the other long and slim. And they were heavy. Bill took the smaller one and together they placed them on the backseat, then Jack was diving for the steering wheel.

  “It’s been great talking to you, George, but we’ve gotta run.”

  “Good luck, boys,” Haskins said, heading back to his front door. “I don’t know what this all means, but I sure hope it works out.”

  The rear wheels kicked gravel as Jack accelerated down the road. He glanced at the rearview mirror and saw Haskins standing on the stoop, watching them go. He couldn’t be sure in the dim light but he thought he saw a group of knee-high figures clustered around him. Then Haskins waved—they all waved.

  Blinking his eyes to clear them, Jack concentrated on the road.

  Somewhere beyond the mists that masked the sky, the sun was setting for the last time.

  “We’re not going to make it,” he said. “No way we can get back alive.”

  “We’ve got to give it our best shot. We don’t have any other options that I can see.”

  “Oh, we’ll give it a shot, Billy boy. One hell of a shot.”

  But we’re not going to make it.

  He wished again that he hadn’t sent Gia and Vicky off with Abe. He needed to see them again, hold them in his arms—one last time before the end.

  WFPW-FM

  JO: This is it, folks. It’s 3:01 in the afternoon. Supposedly the last sunset, man. If Sapir’s curve is right, the last time we’ll ever see daylight.

  FREDDY: Yeah. Nobody’s offered us any hope, so we can’t pass any on to you. We wish we could, but—

  JO: And don’t ask us why we’re here because we don’t know ourselves. Maybe ’cause it’s the only thing we know how to do.

  FREDDY: Whatever, we’ll keep on doing it as long as the generators hold out, so keep us on as long as you’ve got batteries to spare. If we hear anything we’ll let you know. And if you hear anything, call us on the CB and we’ll pass it on.