Scenes from the Secret History

  Glaeken has been holding Jack back from a full frontal assault on Rasalom. After the events of Fatal Error he unleashes Jack, who wastes no time in bringing it to the One.

  Here he presents his preliminary shopping list to Abe…

  THE DARK AT THE END

  (sample)

  “Oy. You’re trying to start the next world war?”

  “Call me the rovin’ gambler.”

  Abe glanced up from the wish list Jack had handed him and offered a puzzled look. “Nu?”

  “Were you ever a Dylan fan?”

  Abe shook his head. “Neither Thomas nor Bob.”

  Jack waved him off. “Never mind then. Take too long to explain.”

  He took a bite of his cheesesteak. He’d brought two of them from Vinny’s pizzeria off West Houston. Vinny was a Philly transplant and knew his way around the classic cheesesteak. Jack confessed to being a purist and a minimalist where cheesesteaks were concerned. Razor-thin slices of steak, provolone cheese, fried onions on a sub roll. No peppers, no gravy, and Vinny might do violence to anyone who added mustard or catsup. Jack would help him.

  Jack and Abe had laid the torpedo-shaped packages on the scarred rear counter of the Isher Sports Shop, spreading the greasy wrapping paper to reveal the treasured contents, then chowed down. Parabellum, Abe’s powder-blue parakeet, hopped around on the hunt for scraps. The seedless rolls made for slim pickings, so Jack tossed him a sliver of meat. He pounced on it.

  Abe, already finished with his first half, had the second clutched in his pudgy fingers, which in turn were attached to pudgy arms connected to a pudgy body. He needed a cheesesteak like he needed herpes, but Jack had given up nannying Abe’s health. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. The last part was likely if Rasalom got his way.

  Abe closed his eyes and groaned softly as he chewed.

  “Why is traif so good?” he said around a mouthful.

  “Because forbidden and flavor both start with F?”

  “In her grave my mother would turn if she – knew what I was eating.”

  “Could be worse.”

  “How?”

  “She could find out about that Taylor pork roll and cheese with egg on a kaiser you had last week.”

  Abe rolled his eyes. “Oy. That might return her from the dead.”

  “I’ll never tell.” Jack nodded at the list. “What can you do for me?”

  “All right already. What I’ve seen so far is not for everyday home protection. The first thing here, an MM-1… you really want an MM-1? You been watching – what’s that film?”

  “Dogs of War?”

  “That’s the one. With that meshuggeneh actor…”

  “I prefer ‘quirky’ – Christopher Walken.”

  “Him, yes. You’ve been watching that movie?”

  “No. Not lately.”

  But Jack remembered it well. The MM-1 had been the film’s iconic weapon. It looked like a sawed-off shotgun with a huge rotating drum that held a dozen 40mm grenades.

  “Then why an MM-1 already?”

  “I may have a need for grenades and I want to be able to use them at a distance greater than I can throw.”

  “Fine. But this throws a dozen in rapid succession.”

  “I’m after a tough bastard.”

  “Well, I don’t have one sitting downstairs. I’ll have to call around.”

  “Fine, but please get on it ASAP.”

  “This is a rush job?”

  Jack looked at him. “It’s a long overdue job.”

  Abe understood. “That mamzer whose name, like God’s, we shouldn’t say?”

  “It’s ‘Rasalom.’ Say his name anytime you feel like it now. I want him to come looking.”

  “Not for me, thank you.” He scratched his stubbled chin. “Like I said, the MM-1 itself I don’t have, but rounds to feed it I do. You want HE, I assume?”

  Jack nodded. High-explosive grenades, yes – the higher, the better.

  “What’s the kill zone?”

  “Five meters.”

  “Perfect.”

  “But…the HE rounds won’t detonate within thirty meters of the launcher.”

  Well, he couldn’t allow himself to get close to Rasalom anyway. But just in case it happened…

  “Understood. What’ve you got for close range? I’ve heard of Beehives–”

  “With the flechettes?” Abe waved his hands. “Those you don’t want.”

  Jack had thought shooting a round that held forty or fifty darts might come in handy.

  “Why not?”

  “Unless you’re very close, the flechettes don’t necessarily land point first. Skip the Beehive. You want the buckshot round. Filled with number-four pellets. Does a nice shredding job close in.”

  “Okay. I’ll take four HE and eight shot.”

  Abe jotted that down on the list, then went to the next item. His head shot up.

  “LX-14? You’re going to trigger a nuclear bomb?”

  “Nooo.” Jack had heard it had been used in nuclear weapons but, although he’d have loved to be able to hit Rasalom with a tactical nuke, he didn’t have one. And Abe wasn’t going to find him one. “I just want max of everything – detonation velocity, brisance, everything. And I’m told this is powerful stuff.”

  “It is. But as far as I know, it’s made only at Livermore in this country. I’ll see what I can do.” He gave Jack a sidelong look. “You’re changing your last name to Kozlowski, maybe?”

  Jack laughed. “Please, no.”

  The Kozlowski brothers, Stan and Joe, had been demolition experts, really got off on blowing things up. Damn near blew Jack to smithereens a couple of years ago. But Jack had learned a few things from them… before he blew them up.

  Abe squinted at the last item on the list. “If I didn’t know better I’d say this says ‘Stingers.’” He looked up and smiled. “But you couldn’t want–”

  Jack was nodding. “Yup. Two of them.”

  Abe threw his hands – and the list – in the air as he gestured to the leaning shelves and crowded aisles running toward the front of the store.

  “Gevalt! This is a sport shop.”

  “What about the armory in the basement? Or did you forget?”

  “Small arms I sell. Small. Stinger missiles are not small arms.”

  “I figure if one guy can carry it and fire it, it’s a small arm.”

  “That’s your definition. Others – like yours truly – would disagree.” He picked up the list and read it again. “You’re sure about this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Abe shook his head. “I should maybe not complain about you saving the world, but… ”

  “But what?”

  He didn’t correct him about the saving-the-world bit. If that happened, fine. But he was out to save Gia and Vicky and Abe and Weezy and Julio and Eddie and a few others.

  “This isn’t your style.”

  “Why? Because of all the firepower?”

  “Yes. With you it’s always up close and personal. This… ” He shrugged again.

  “I don’t have a choice, Abe. Get too close to this guy and he can freeze you with a look, paralyze you so all you can do is watch. I’m not giving him that chance. I have to operate from a distance.”

  “But surface-to-air missiles?”

  “Well…” Jack paused. He’d never told Abe this.

  “Well, what?”

  “He can fly.”

  Abe’s eyebrows lifted halfway to his far-receded hairline. “Like a bird, you mean? Like Superman?”

  “No…but he can float. I’ve seen it. I don’t intend to give him a chance to do that. But if he does… he gets stung.”

  Abe sighed as he resettled himself on his stool. “I know the world is not what I once thought it to be. Seeing that thing that came out of the Hudson and cut up your chest – how long has it been?”

&nb
sp; “Three years this coming summer.”

  If summer came. Word was it might not.

  Abe shook his head. “Like a lifetime it seems. Anyway, seeing that happen made it abundantly clear that the world is keeping secrets. Not just the kind I thought it was – and is. Currencies and economies and governments are being manipulated, but that’s gornisht compared to what’s really going on, right?”

  “’Fraid so. It’s cosmic, dude.”

  “Since when you’re a hippy?”

  “But it is cosmic.”

  “And how do you find this Adversary, as you call him?”

  “I hope to pick up his trail tonight.”

  “Where? In the cosmos?”

  “Nope. New Jersey.”

  Jersey again? The Dark at the End

  May

  NIGHTWORLD

  This is the end of the Secret History. Because after Nightworld it’s no longer secret.

  Nightworld is an ensemble novel. It’s like Old Home Week with characters from across the Secret History – The Keep, The Tomb, The Touch, Reborn, “Tenants,” and so on. Some live, some die, and some become collateral damage. No one is unscathed as all scores are settled, all debts are paid.

  The novel picks up a couple of months after the horrors of The Dark at the End. The Adversary Cycle and Jack’s tale have fully merged and this is the grand finale. Nightworld ends both narrative tracks, as well as the Secret History itself. More stories remain to be told, but the timeline stops there. I will set no stories after Nightworld.

  I have extensively revised Nightworld since its initial publication in the early 90s. Jack’s role has been expanded – he is now a major player – but he remains one of many. Characters who didn’t exist when I wrote the original must be dealt with.

  This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a scream in the dark…

  Check out the first of many holes in the earth:

  NIGHTWORLD

  (sample)

  Manhattan

  The city was getting nuttier by the minute.

  Jack ambled past the darkened Museum of Natural History and headed south on Central Park West. On the corner of 74th a bearded guy dressed in sackcloth stood holding a placard. Straight out of a New Yorker cartoon. His laboriously hand-printed sign bellowed “REPENT!” in giant letters at the top followed by a Biblical quote so long you’d have to stop and read for a good three minutes before you got it all.

  Yeah, the world might be coming to an end, but spring had sprung, and spring meant baseball, and the start of the baseball season meant it was time once again for the annual Repairman Jack Little League Park-a-Thon. Time to stroll Central Park and tempt the muggers out of hiding so they could give to the local Little League equipment fund. Give till it hurt.

  Come to think of it, he’d met Glaeken during last year’s Park-a-Thon.

  As he crossed CPW he heard a deep rumble. Thunder? The sky was clear. Maybe a storm was gathering over Jersey.

  He entered the park at 72nd Street, got on the jogging path, and continued south. A young teenage couple, certainly not seventeen yet, appeared, faces pale and strained, running like the girl’s father was after them. They weren’t joggers – weren’t dressed for it. In fact, they seemed to be buttoning up their clothing as they ran.

  Jack stepped off the path to let them pass.

  “S’up?”

  “Earthquake!” the boy said, his voice a breathless whisper.

  Jack walked on. He’d heard of making the Earth move – he’d had it move for him a couple of times – but it was nothing to panic over. The quake in 2011 had been a non-event.

  Half a minute later another guy ran by and said the same thing.

  “Where?” Jack hadn’t felt anything.

  “Sheep Meadow!”

  “But what–?”

  The guy was gone, running like a madman.

  Curious now, Jack broke into a loping run and cut off the jogging path. He skirted the lake until he reached the wide expanse of grass in the lower third of the park called the Sheep Meadow. He’d heard that real sheep used to graze these fifteen acres as late as the 1930s. In the wan starlight he could make out a ragged, broken line of murmuring people rimming the area. And smack in the center of the meadow, what looked like a pool of inky liquid. But nothing reflected off its surface. A huge circle of empty blackness.

  Tar?

  Jack paused. Something about that black pool raised his hackles. An instinctive fear surged up from the most primitive parts of his being. He’d experienced something similar when he’d seen his first rakosh. But this was different. This was a hell of a lot bigger.

  He forced his feet to move, to carry him toward the pool. He could make out the figures of a couple of people at the edge and they seemed all right, so he guessed it was safe.

  As he neared, Jack realized it wasn’t a pool at all. A huge sinkhole, a good hundred feet across, had opened in the middle of the meadow.

  He skidded to a halt on the grass.

  A hole…

  He had a bad history with holes in the Earth during the past couple of years. One in Monroe had almost swallowed him, and another in Florida had released some nasty creatures into the Everglades. Both had been connected with the Otherness, and now the Otherness was on the march.

  Maybe this was something else, something innocent.

  Yeah, right.

  Two guys there ahead of him stood on the edge, laughing, jostling each other. Jack could see they were young, dressed head to toe in black, with spiky hair. He stopped behind them. No way he wanted to get that close.

  One of the guys on the rim turned and spotted him.

  “Hey, dude, c’mon up here. You gotta see this. It’s fuckin’ awesome, man!”

  “Yeah!” said the other. “The mother of all potholes!”

  They started laughing and elbowing each other again.

  Wrecked.

  “That’s okay. I can see all I want from here.”

  Which was mostly true. In the wash of light from the tall buildings ringing the lower end of the park, Jack could make out a sheer wall on the far side of the hole leading straight down through the sod, the topsoil, and the granite bedrock. The edge of the hole was clean.

  He’d seen pictures of sinkholes before on the news, from places like Guatemala where the underground water had been tapped out. But he’d never seen one so perfectly round. This looked like it had been made with a King Kong cookie cutter. Manhattan’s bedrock – he could almost hear his dear, lost Weezy correcting him that it was call “schist” – was near the surface here. Could sinkholes occur in solid granite? Didn’t think so.

  Otherness…definitely the Otherness.

  The two kids were still fooling around, dancing on the edge, playing macho games. Jack was moving to his right, away from them, trying to position the light-bleed from Central Park West behind him for a better look, when he heard a yelp of terror.

  He saw one of the kids leaning forward over the edge, his arms windmilling. Even from Jack’s distance it was plain he was overbalanced and no longer fooling around, but his buddy only stood beside him, laughing at his antics.

  His laughter died with the first kid’s scream as he toppled headfirst into the hole.

  “Jason! Oh, shit! Jason!”

  He lunged for his friend’s foot, missed it, and Jason disappeared into the blackness. His scream was awful to hear, not merely for the blood-chilling terror it carried, but for its length. The cry seemed to go on forever, echoing up endlessly from below as Jason plummeted into the depths. It never really ended. It simply… faded… out…

  His friend was on his hands and knees at the edge, looking down into the blackness.

  “Oh, fuck, Jason! Where are you?” He turned to Jack. “How deep is this fuckin’ thing?”

  Jack didn’t answer. If this one held true to the others he’d seen, it was bottomless.

/>   He stepped to within half a dozen feet of the kid, got down on his belly, and crawled to the edge. He’d seen light deep down in the others – not a bottom, just light… a hazy violet glow. Maybe he’d see that–

  Vertigo hit him like a gut punch as he peeked over and saw nothing but impenetrable blackness.

  Jack closed his eyes and hung on. And as he did he thought he could still hear Jason screaming down there… way, way down there… fading…

  He felt a slight breeze against the back of his neck. Air was flowing into the hole. Into the hole. That meant it had to go somewhere, be open at the other end. He had a good idea where that might be.

  And then the earth began to slide away beneath his fingers, beneath his wrists, his forearms. Christ! The rim was giving way.

  Jack rolled to his left and back, away from the edge, but he wasn’t fast enough. A Cadillac-sized wedge of earth gave way and crumbled beneath him. He slid downward toward the black maw. With a desperate, panicky lunge he managed to grab a fistful of turf and hang on. His feet kicked empty air and for one breathless moment he felt eternity beckoning from below. Then the toes of his sneakers found the rocky wall. He levered himself up to ground level and scrambled away from the edge as fast as his rubbery knees would carry him.

  When he’d gone a good fifty feet he heard a terrified cry and risked a look back. Jason’s buddy had stayed behind and the edge had given way under him. Most of his body had dropped into the hole. Jack could see his head, see his arms and hands tearing at the grass in a losing effort to hold on.

  “Help me, man!” he cried in a voice all tears and terror. “God, please!”

  Jack started to unbutton his shirt, thinking he might be able to use it as a rope. But before he was halfway done, a huge clump of earth gave way beneath the kid’s hands and he was gone, leaving behind only a fading high-pitched wail.

  More earth sloughed off and fell away, narrowing the distance between Jack and the edge. The damn hole was getting bigger.

  He looked around. The few people who had been scattered around the perimeter of the Sheep Meadow were now fleeing for the streets. Good idea, Jack thought. A fine idea. He broke into a headlong run and followed them.

  And as he ran it occurred to him that a big chunk of Central Park was missing. What was it Glaeken had said last night?