"It wants you," said Number One on his left.
"No! That's not true! I'm just icing on the cake!"
"You are the only way to close the gateway," said Number Two.
"You want to close it? I thought you were working for them! Hey, look, we're on the same side!"
They didn't seem to care.
Ahead, the growing hole had undermined the lawn. Jack saw Lew's Lexus tilt sideways and do a slow slide into the pit. The backyard swing set followed close behind.
With Jack fighting them every inch of the way, and cursing himself for using all four rounds in the Semmerling, they dragged him ever closer to the edge.
"This thing isn't here for me!" Jack shouted. "It's for Roma—the guy they call The One."
That got them. They glanced at each other and slowed their march.
The entire front yard was sloping toward the pit now, and out of the corner of his eye Jack saw Frayne's van begin to slide their way.
"The One?" said Number One. "He is here?"
"He was a moment ago."
The van was closer now, picking up speed. Gathering his strength, Jack threw all his weight to the right in a desperate lunge, veering the three of them into the van's path. It caught Number Two behind the knees, knocking him down. He released his hold on Jack as his right arm caught on the bumper and he was dragged away.
Jack turned and immediately began pounding on Number One with his free hand, punching at his face, chopping at his neck and shoulder. He might as well have been beating him with a Nerf bat for all the notice he took. He was far more interested in his buddy who was riding the fast track to the Otherness.
Number Two struggled futilely to free his trapped arm as the sliding van pulled him along. He reached out for help.
As Number One dragged Jack toward his partner, Jack searched his pockets for the Semmerling. It wouldn't fire but maybe he could use it as a club. His fingers found Canfield's screwdriver instead.
Yes!
He yanked it out, hauled back, and rammed the shaft into the side of Number One's neck with everything he had. It didn't go in easily, like stabbing into a hunk of pure gristle, but he left three quarters of the shaft buried in the tough flesh.
That got some attention. Number One's knees wobbled and he staggered a step, relaxing his grip enough to allow Jack to tear free. He gave Jack a quick expressionless look as dark fluid flowed from the wound, but made no attempt to remove the screwdriver. He straightened and continued toward his buddy.
Jack backed away, watching in disbelief. The guy shouldn't even be standing, yet there he was, grabbing Number Two's hand as the van began tipping over the edge. Number One gave a hard, two-handed pull, and Jack heard the trapped one's arm give a sickening crack as it came free of the bumper.
But a louder, deeper crunch beneath and behind him seized Jack's attention. He looked around and saw the giant oak leaning his way, tipping toward him like a falling skyscraper. He dove to his right and rolled out of its path as the ground caved in beneath him. The trunk barely missed him as it fell. With a deafening crash that bounced Jack off the ground, it landed across the hole, straddling it like a bridge.
When Jack regained his feet, the van was gone, as were his two nemeses.
8
The One watched the hole in rapt fascination, only vaguely barely aware of the struggle between the stranger and the Twins. This was it. The first of many. This gateway would spawn others, hundreds of them around the globe, all portals for the Otherness, allowing it to flow into this plane, change it, claim it. He would have preferred this first one to have opened in the heart of Manhattan, but this was close enough.
He stepped back with Mauricio when the big oak started to go, and laughed when he saw the Twins tumble over the edge.
Gone! The last vestige of the opposition had been eliminated from this plane! Now nothing stood in his way.
But a howl of dismay from Mauricio meant he thought otherwise.
"Noooo!"
"What is wrong?"
Mauricio leaped from his shoulder and scampered toward the gateway crying, "They mustn't! They mustn't!"
9
Jack crept toward the edge of the hole. He was almost sure the two guys in black were gone but almost wasn't good enough. He had to be positive. Bracing himself against the downdraft, he peeked again into the swirling, flashing depths.
Gone.
No—movement along the near wall, just below him ...
There they hung, clinging to the oak's ropy roots. Or rather, one of them was. Number One—with the screwdriver still jutting from his neck—had a one-handed grip on a thick root while his other hand clutched Number Two's, whose right arm hung uselessly at his side. Number One had lost his glasses in the fall. He stared up at Jack with large black expressionless eyes.
"Gotcha," Jack said.
With only one good arm, Number Two was helpless; and Number One couldn't climb back up without letting go of his buddy. Strangely, he seemed to have no intention of doing that.
Jack sensed a deep loyalty there, all the more striking for its almost casual nature. Despite all that had happened, Jack responded to that.
Time was running out. With the rim of the hole still expanding, the tree and all its roots would be hopping on the Otherness Express in a minute or so. Every cell in his body was urging him to get the hell out of here, but he needed answers, damn it.
"I'll make you a deal," Jack shouted over the roar. "We call a truce, and you tell me who sent you and why you've been following me. That happens, I'll pull you up and—"
A screech startled him as Roma's monkey leaped onto the tree-trunk and began jumping about.
And then it shouted at him—in English.
"Save them! Don't let them fall!"
Stunned, Jack stared at the monkey, then glanced over his shoulder. Roma stood back on the sidewalk, watching.
"Quickly!" the monkey screeched as it danced back and forth on the straddling trunk. "Help them up! Don't let the Twins fall! The gateway isn't big enough yet! They'll ruin everything!"
Jack glanced at it—yeah, right—then peered back into the hole.
"Damn you!" said another voice, lower and coarser.
Jack looked up in time to see Roma's organ grinder monkey swell into the red-eyed dog-monkey that had attacked him in the basement.
"Holy—"
He rolled away as the thing hurled itself at him with a bellowing roar.
But it wasn't after him. It crouched in the spot Jack had vacated and leaned over the edge of the hole, reaching for the men in black.
"Hang on," it shouted. "I'll pull you up."
Jack peeked over the edge and saw that the monster had grabbed the upper end of the root and was hauling it up.
He watched Number One stare up at the creature a moment, then look down at Number Two. Number Two shook his head. Number One looked back up, this time at Jack, as if trying to speak to him with his eyes. He shook his head.
Then let go of the root.
"Jeez!" Jack said as the two of them plummeted into the depths.
The creature let out a howl—Jack couldn't tell if it was rage or frustration or both, but it was loud—then leaped back onto the fallen trunk.
Together they watched the maelstrom catch the pair and spin them downward until they vanished.
Now what? He thought, gazing into the swirling, flashing abyss.
Suddenly he sensed a change in the gateway. The flashing stopped as a bright speck of fire appeared in its suddenly darkened depths. The spot grew and swelled, rushing upward.
Jack knew—just knew he shouldn't be here. The dog-monkey was still raging and howling as Jack turned and ran as fast as his injured knee would let him. He was maybe a dozen feet away when a blast hurled him face-first to the ground. He rolled over and saw a column of fiery white light shoot into the sky, engulfing the tree trunk and the monkey thing. He watched it rip the flesh from the creature, then vaporize its bones along with the center of the
trunk. The light shot toward the stars, poised for a heartbeat, then faded.
And now ... silence. Real silence. The sucking downdraft had stopped, and the flashes along with it.
Jack staggered once more to the rim ... just a cavity in the earth now, maybe fifteen feet deep. An excavation for a foundation ... with the charred ends of a fallen oak on either side. The men in black, the dog-monkey thing—all gone. Only one loose end remained ...
Roma.
He looked toward the sidewalk, but Roma was gone.
Jack made a quick turn but he was nowhere to be seen. Where the—?
Sirens began to wail in the distance. House lights were on up and down the street and people were beginning to wander out into their yards to find out what all the ruckus was about. He limped to his car—time to get out of here.
Jack kept his headlights off as he eased away.
10
Off to his left, the night sky began to pale as Jack drove toward the expressway. As much as he ached to floor the gas pedal, he kept to the limit. Last thing he needed now was to run across a cop and be stopped for speeding.
He had the windows closed and the heater cranked to maximum, not so much against the cold outside as the marrow-deep chill within as Frayne Canfield's words—he'd spoken them only hours ago, but it seemed like eons—pursued him down Glen Cove Road.
You are involved. ... more deeply than you can possibly imagine. ...
No ... he wanted no involvement with anything even remotely like what he'd just encountered. But the worst of it was he still wasn't sure just what he'd encountered. His life already was complicated enough. He didn't need to be involved as some sort of pawn in a cosmic conflict.
Cosmic conflict ... jeez. Got to stop talking like that.
Already the events of the last hour were beginning to take on an unreal feel. Maybe none of it had really happened. Maybe he'd been drugged or something ...
And maybe I shouldn't try to kid myself.
It had happened. Something was going on, something big ... an eternal war behind the scenery.
Suddenly dizzy and a little sick, Jack stopped the car and got out to gasp some cool fresh air. He looked around at the trees, the towns flanking the highway, the fading stars ... and shivered.
Scenery? Was that all that this was? Nothing more than scenery?
He couldn't live like that. It made his day-to-day life so ... insignificant. He had to believe that what he did mattered, at least to him. Otherwise ... why bother?
Jack shook his head. He'd hired on to this gig to answer one simple question: Where's Melanie Ehler? He'd answered that one, but now he was carrying around dozens more. With no way to answer even one of them.
All right—what did he know for sure?
He forced a smile. Okay, first off, he was still owed the second half of his fee for finding Melanie Ehler, and he knew for damn sure he wasn't ever going to collect it.
And betting on Roma's murderous monkey monster being dead seemed a sure thing.
Beyond those two, though, everything else was pretty much up for grabs.
He could assume that Zaleski and Kenway and Lew were dead on the far side of that hole, but did "dead" mean the same thing over there?
Melanie and Canfield were in that same Other place as well—but without their "ticket." Jack hoped they were slow roasting over what passed for a fire in the Otherness.
And what about Olive? What had happened to her corpse? Sent into the Otherness too? Or would it turn up in some alley next week?
Those two black-eyed goons ... Jack had assumed they were working for the Otherness, and that they'd killed and mutilated Olive. But now he wasn't so sure. At the end they seemed to be working against the Otherness.
Does that mean they were on my side?
But they'd wanted to chuck him into the hole—came damn close to succeeding. Hadn't seemed to care one way or the other about him, they simply wanted to close the gateway, by any means necessary. They thought he would do it, so he'd immediately become expendable.
With allies like that, who needed enemies?
But as it worked out—they'd closed the gateway. When they hit bottom or reached the Otherness or wherever they ended up, they caused some sort of titanic explosion, a blast of light that must have been visible for miles.
Visible for miles ... like the Tunguska explosion Kenway and Zaleski talked about tonight. Hadn't Kenway said one theory held that it was caused by an antimatter meteor striking the earth?
Maybe that was what those two guys had been—antimatter meteors of a sort, striking the Otherness's matter. Or more likely, matter meteors striking the Otherness's antimatter. Because the Otherness seemed anti-everything.
And finally, what about Sal Roma—"The One," as Melanie had called him? Had he been for real—some sort of ageless Otherness superhybrid born in Monroe and waiting to take over? And where was he now? Had he been so closely linked to the monkey thing that when it went up in smoke, so did he?
Jack doubted that. Some primitive part of him sensed The One still out there, prowling around, looking for a new way to create a world-changing cataclysm that would usher in the age of Otherness.
And he knew beyond all reason and all doubt that someday they would meet again.
But even more disturbing was the final look Number One had given him before he'd let go of that root. Jack kept seeing those black eyes, so cold and expressionless, and yet ... a nebulous feeling that some sort of torch was being passed.
Not to me, thank you.
But like it or not, want it or not, had he come too close and seen too much, and because of that been drafted into some sort of shadow army?
The idea gave him the cold shakes.
He started as he sensed something dark moving above, blotting out the stars. He ducked into a crouch and looked up.
Nothing ... an empty sky.
He straightened and slid back into the car. No, he couldn't live like this. Had to shake it off. He'd be a paranoid basket case if he didn't.
He'd handle it ... give him a few days and he'd be back to normal. He'd go on living his life as before, taking on fix-it jobs, kibitzing with Abe, hanging at Julio's, playing with Vicky, loving Gia. Not your normal everyday life, but one firmly grounded in reality—the only reality he knew or wanted to know. He'd put the episode in Monroe behind him and never look back. This page was turned, this chapter closed.
But as he shifted into gear and drove on, Canfield's words seemed to whisper through the heater vents.
You are involved ... more deeply than you can possibly imagine ...
Table of Contents
TUESDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
WEDNESDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
THURSDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
IN THE WEE HOURS
Roma ...
Olive ...
Jack ...
Roma ...
FRIDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
IN THE WEE HOURS
Roma ...
James ...
Miles ...
Jack ...
Roma ...
SATURDAY
1
2
3
4
5
&
nbsp; 6
7
8
9
10
SUNDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Conspiracies Page 33