Conspiracies

  Then he sensed a change in the cellar. He wasn't sure what was happening, but he could feel the hairs rising along his bare arms. Not from fear or alarm, but from the charge that seemed to fill the air. A little like what he'd felt in the hotel, but stronger, more concentrated.

  Jack wasn't the only one to notice. He saw Ken way rubbing his arms, tugging at his shirt collar.

  "Do you feel it?" Canfield said, grinning.

  The lights flickered.

  Lew looked around. "Did anyone just see ... ?"

  The others nodded silently.

  Then all four sixty-watt bulbs in the ceiling dimmed to about thirty—and stayed dimmed. As they lost power, the crystal atop the dome began to pulse with a faint amber light.

  The air became more highly charged, and then the mini tower began to hum, low at first, but steadily rising in pitch. Jack saw the semicircle widen as all but Kenway eased back.

  Where's that thing getting its power? he wondered, tensing on the steps. He didn't like this one bit.

  The crystal pulsed more brightly, strobing distorted shadows against the walls; the hum rose further in pitch as the pulses cycled faster and faster, finally merging into a steady glow.

  And then the tower began to rise off the floor.

  "Holy shit!" Zaleski said. "This is too fucking much!"

  Kenway looked grim, Lew looked puzzled, and Canfield ... Canfield looked absolutely rapt.

  It continued to rise—one inch ... two ... six ... a foot ...

  Jack sat frozen, bloodless. This was no trick. No invisible wires on that thing. He'd set it up himself. The tower was really and truly floating in the air.

  "Didn't I tell you, soldier boy?" Zaleski said, clapping Kenway on the shoulder. "Alien technology! This is how they make their saucers go!"

  Kenway said nothing, but his quick glance at Zaleski was pure malice.

  Jack fought the urge to pack it in and head for his car. The crawling sensation in his gut was more intense than ever, telling him he wasn't needed here, and didn't even belong here.

  This isn't what you were hired for. Get out while you can.

  The tower rose until the blazing crystal set in its dome was poised between two rafters. And then it simply hung there.

  Jack felt a cool breeze against this back. Had somebody opened a door upstairs? He was about to get up to go look when Canfield's shout stopped him.

  "Look!" he cried. He was pointing at the floor.

  "Good Lord!" Kenway said, finally retreating a step.

  A hole was opening. The concrete wasn't melting or crumbling, it was simply fading away. But no dirt was visible beneath, just ... hole. And the wider it got, the stronger the breeze against Jack's back, rushing toward the opening.

  "Good God!" Lew said. "What is it?"

  "What's it look like?" Zaleski said without looking up. "A pizza? It's a fucking hole."

  A hole ...

  Jack gripped the edges of the step that supported him. His dreams the past two nights had been nightmares about a hole ... one that looked like it wanted to gobble up the world.

  "Hey, guys," he said, "I think we should call this off."

  "Relax, Jack," Kenway said. "You won't fall in from there."

  Idiot, Jack thought. "What if it keeps enlarging?"

  "I gotta feeling this ain't the first time this hole has opened," Zaleski said. "And the house is still here, ain't it?"

  Jack watched with mounting alarm as the hole kept expanding, widening until the concrete entrapping the rope ladder disappeared, leaving it hanging free over the rim and dangling into the opening.

  And then it stopped enlarging.

  Jack sagged with relief.

  "I think that's it," Zaleski said.

  Kenway leaned his body forward but kept his feet where they were. "How deep, I wonder?"

  Zaleski inched forward, shuffling his feet nearer and nearer to the edge. "Only one way to find out."

  He stopped with his toes perhaps half a foot from the rim, then craned his neck to peer over the edge.

  "I see some light way down there and—holy shit!" He jumped back from the edge.

  "What?" Lew said. "What's wrong?"

  "Look!" Canfield said, pointing to the ladder.

  The ropes were moving, vibrating as they stretched over the rim.

  "Something's coming," Zaleski said. "Climbing the ladder."

  I hope he means someone, Jack thought, backing up another tread on the steps.

  He sensed something ugly, something sinister slipping from that hole and coiling through the cellar. He held his breath as the gyrations of the ropes grew more pronounced, and then a single black talon rose above floor level and hooked onto the concrete ... followed by a head ... a dark-haired human head ... with a woman's face ...

  "Melanie!" Lew cried and rushed forward.

  He grabbed her arms and lifted her from the opening. Then he wrapped her in a bear hug that left her shoes a good foot off the floor.

  "Oh, Mel, Mel!" he sobbed. "I've been so worried. Thank God, you're back! Thank God!"

  Jack couldn't see Melanie's face, but her arms didn't seem to be returning Lew's hug with anywhere near his fervor. Especially the left arm ...

  This was the first time Jack had seen Melanie's deformed forearm, and it wasn't what he'd expected. It seemed a little thinner than the right as it tapered down to the wrist; beyond that it stayed rounded instead of flattening into a palm. Lew had told him that all the fingernails had fused, leaving her with one large thick nail. But Jack hadn't pictured this big, sharp, black claw.

  She'd supposedly kept it bandaged in public, and now Jack could see why. It was wicked looking.

  "Lewis, please," Melanie said in a strained voice. "You're crushing me."

  He released her. "Sorry," he said, wiping his eyes. "It's just that I've missed you so."

  "You two can snuggle later," Zaleski said. He indicated the hole and the still floating tower. "What is all this, Melanie? And where the hell have you been?"

  "Home," she whispered. A strange fevered glow lit in her eyes as she said the word.

  Jack eased down the steps for a closer look. Finally he was getting to see the notorious Melanie Ehler in the flesh. She seemed far more intense than her photographs had indicated. Her hair was darker, her black eyebrows thicker, and her thin lips were split into the rapturous grin of a zealot who'd just heard the voice of God.

  "Not here," Kenway said. He pointed to the hole. "What's down there?"

  "Home," she repeated, then turned to Frayne. "It worked. I've found the way to the Otherness. We can go home now."

  Canfield clasped his hands together and looked as if he was going to puddle up along with Lew.

  "Mel," Lew said, pointing to her arm. "What happened to your nail?"

  "It changed," she said, raising her black talon to eye level. "As soon as I got there it changed shape and color ... to the way it's supposed to look."

  She looked around and Jack felt something like an electric shock as her gaze locked on him.

  "And you must be Repairman Jack," she said.

  Jack stepped off the steps onto the floor. "Just Jack'll do."

  He glanced at the others, but the "Repairman" remark didn't seem to have registered. They were all still fixated on that hole. Good.

  "Thank you so much," she said, stepping forward and extending her hand. "I knew you were the right man for the job."

  Jack was about to protest that he'd done very little when Melanie's touch stopped him. Her hand was cold.

  "Come on, Melanie," Zaleski said. "Enough with this 'home' shit. What's going on?"

  She stepped back to where she could face everyone. "I've found a gateway to the Otherness," she said.

  Kenway snorted. "The what?"

  "It would take too long to explain fully," she said, "and I've neither the time nor the inclination. Suffice it to say that the single solution to all the mysteries that have plagued you, the answer you've spent so many years searchin
g for, lies on the far side of that opening."

  Jack had heard all this from Roma and Canfield. Hadn't believed a word of it before, but now ...

  He hooked his arm around the support column at the foot of the stairs and looked around. He still sensed something nasty in the air. Was he the only one?

  "Is this that 'Grand Unification' thing you've been talking us to death about?" Zaleski said.

  "Yes, Jim," she said with a small, tolerant smile. "It's all there. The secrets behind your UFOs and Majestic-12."

  "Yeah, right."

  She turned to Kenway. "And for you, Miles ... the identity—and the real agenda—of the power behind the New World Order conspiracy."

  "I sincerely doubt that," he said huffily.

  She looked around. "If only Olive were here."

  "She's been missing for days, Mel," Lew said.

  Jack watched her closely. She seemed genuinely puzzled and disappointed." Didn't she know?

  "That's too bad," she said. "The truth behind her cherished Book of Revelations is on the other side as well."

  "All down there?" Zaleski said.

  "'Down' isn't quite right. 'Over' there would be more accurate."

  "But how?" Lew said. His face had a hurt look. "And why?"

  "How?" she said. "I learned from talking to some old timers out in Shoreham, people who had relatives who'd worked in the Tesla lab, that before he sold his property and dismantled his tower, Tesla had buried mysterious steel canisters here and there around his property, and even beyond it."

  "After the Tunguska explosion!" Zaleski said. "Must have scared him shitless."

  Jack had already heard enough about Nikola Tesla and Tunguska to last a lifetime, but he couldn't bring himself to leave just yet ... not with that tower floating in the air and the hole yawning in the floor. He remembered the holes in his recent nightmares, and wanted to see this one closed before he headed home.

  Melanie said, "I don't know if Tesla caused the Tunguska explosion, and I don't really care. But I can tell you this: Nikola Tesla was not the type of man to be frightened by a mere explosion, no matter how powerful. I've suspected all along that something else was at the root of his breakdown. And now I know."

  "This ... Otherness?" Kenway said.

  Melanie nodded. "Yes. During the year I spent searching for those canisters, I found three. One of them confirmed my suspicions. I gave the others to Ron Clayton and—"

  "Clayton?" Jack said. That name rang a bell. "You knew Ronald Clayton?"

  Melanie shrugged. "We shared an interest in Tesla. Ron was more interested in his electronics theories."

  "I'll bet he was," Jack said, remembering the transmitter he'd seen on a hilltop upstate. Apparently the creep hadn't been the great innovator he'd wanted everybody to believe.

  "Whether Tesla's tower was able to broadcast energy is irrelevant," Melanie said. "What I do know, or rather what I have proven"—she gestured toward the hole—"is that it can open a gateway to the Otherness. And I think that's what unhinged Tesla. He made contact, saw what was on the other side, and immediately slammed the door."

  "It's that bad?" Lew said.

  "Not for me," she said. "And not for Frayne. But for the rest of you ... " She slowly shook her head.

  "Hey!" Zaleski said. "How bad can it be?"

  "It is the truth ... and the truth at times can be unbearable."

  Somewhere in the back of Jack's head another Jack shouted, You can't handle the truth!

  Zaleski stepped to the rim of the hole and peered over the edge. "And you were down there how long?"

  "What day is it?" Melanie said.

  Jack glanced at his watch. "Just about four A.M. Sunday morning."

  "You've been gone almost a week, Mel!" Lew cried.

  She shrugged. "Time is different there. It seemed like barely two days."

  "Well, if you can fucking handle it," Zaleski said, "so can I." He turned to Kenway. "Whatta y'say, Miles? Want to get up close and personal with Melanie's Grand Unification Theory?"

  "I don't know," Kenway said slowly. He sidled to the edge and looked down. "Awfully dark down there."

  "You can see some light way down. Besides, you're carrying aren't you?"

  Kenway stared at him.

  Zaleski snorted a laugh. "Look who I'm asking! Does the Pope wear a cross? Come on, Miles. You're armed and dangerous. Don't be a pussy."

  Kenway glared at him, then hitched up his belt. He pointed to the rope ladder. "After you."

  Zaleski gave Kenway a thumbs up, then squatted next to the ladder. He grabbed the two ropes, swung his leg over, then started down.

  "Is this such a good idea?" Jack said.

  "It's a great idea, Jack. You're coming right? Maybe you'll find those missing hours."

  "You can have them," Jack said. "Kind of late for spelunking. My job's done here. I think maybe I'll be heading home."

  "No!" Melanie said quickly. "I mean, not just yet. I need to talk to you first."

  "All right," Zaleski said. "Suit yourself. Here goes nothing."

  He started down and disappeared below floor level.

  After a few seconds, his voice echoed up from below. "Come on, Miles, you chickenshit bastard. Let's go."

  Kenway pulled his .45 automatic from under his sweater, flicked off the safety, then put it away again. He sighed, looked around, and—with much less enthusiasm than Zaleski—started down.

  Jack stepped to the edge of the hole and watched the bristling hair atop Kenway's head recede into the depths. Damn, that looked deep.

  Lew came up beside him. "I'll be. There is some light down there."

  "Way down," Jack said, spotting the faint flickers.

  "Are you sure you don't want to go too?" Melanie said, looking at Jack. She sounded almost ... hopeful.

  Jack wondered about that. A moment ago when he'd said he was leaving, she wanted him to stay. Now she seemed to be encouraging him to leave by another route.

  "I'm very sure," Jack said. "In fact, I don't think I've ever been so sure of anything in my life. But you said you wanted to talk to me."

  Lew jumped in before Melanie could answer. "Before we go any further, I need an answer to something. When I asked you if it was so bad down there, you said, 'Not for me and Frayne.' What did you mean by that?"

  Melanie sighed and looked away. Jack saw a touch of sadness and regret in her eyes.

  "Lewis ... when I called it 'home,' I wasn't exaggerating. When that gateway opened, and I entered the Otherness, that's exactly what it felt like—coming home. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged. And Frayne will feel it too."

  "But I won't?" Lew said, his voice full of hurt.

  Zaleski's voice echoed up from the hole then.

  "Hey! Something weird down here ... like everything's floating."

  Melanie went to the edge and called down. "That means you're almost there. Gravity reverses at the transition point. You'll have to climb up the rest of the way."

  She waited, and a few seconds later Zaleski's voice came back, tinged with wonder and excitement, teetering on the verge of hysterical laughter.

  "Fucking-ay, you're right! This is the weirdest shit I've ever seen!"

  "Never mind them," Lew said. "What about me? Why won't I feel like I belong there?"

  Melanie turned back to her husband. She spoke matter-of-factly, as if explaining the obvious to a child. "Because you'd be an outsider there, Lewis. You have no Otherness in you."

  "Sure I do," he said, pointing to his leg. "I'm not normal. I'm different too. Not as different as you, maybe, but—"

  "Different inside" she said. "Frayne and I are different right down to our genes. You're completely human, Lewis. We're not. We're hybrids."

  Lew looked stunned. His jaw worked a few times before he could speak. "Hybrids?"

  "Yes, Lewis. Hybrids." She walked over to Canfield's wheelchair and rested her claw on his shoulder. "Neither of us really belongs here."

  Jack noti
ced how Lew's eyes locked on the spot where his wife was touching Canfield. His heart went out to the guy, but he couldn't help him. Lew was pushing for answers and Melanie was giving them to him.

  She could take it a little easier on him, though.

  "How?" he said. "When?"

  "Late in the winter of 1968, right here in Monroe, the Otherness spawned something in this plane. Frayne and I were just tiny, newly formed masses of cells within our mothers at the time. We were vulnerable to the influence of the Otherness then—our DNA was altered forever as it made its beachhead."

  "What beachhead?" Jack said.

  Obviously she was referring to the "burst of Otherness" Canfield had mentioned. But what exactly were they talking about?

  "It was not something anyone would take notice of. But the fate of this plane was sealed in that instant." Her eyes fairly glowed as she spoke. "A child was conceived. A special child—The One. He is grown now, and soon he will make his presence known."

  "Sounds like Olive's Antichrist," Jack said.

  Melanie smirked. "Compared to The One, Olive's Antichrist would be a fitting playmate for your children. When he comes into his own, everything will change.

  The very laws of physics and nature as you know them will be transformed. And after the cataclysm ... Otherness will reign."

  Ooookay, Jack thought. Time to go.

  "Sounds like fun," he said, turning toward the couch to retrieve his jacket. "But I've got to get moving."

  "No, please," she said, moving away from Canfield and gripping his arm—Jack was relieved she used her hand instead of her claw. "Not yet. I must speak to you."

  "Hey, that thing's getting hot," Lew said, holding up his palm to the Tesla device but not touching it.

  Jack could feel the heat faintly from where he was standing.

  "Lewis," Melanie said, "I wish to speak to his man alone."

  "Alone?" Lew said. "Why alone? What have you got to say to Jack that I can't hear?"

  "I'll tell you about it later, Lewis. Wait for me outside, in the car."

  He stared at her. "You've changed, Mel."

  "Yes ... I have. I finally know who I am, and I've learned why I'm the way I am. And I'm proud of it. Please, Lewis. Wait for me in the car. I'll be up in a few minutes and we'll go home together."

  His eyes widened. "Really? We're going home?" He glanced at the hole. "But I thought ... "